> Javascript is the ONLY language where people think they can just pick it up and use it with ZERO education first. Sure, they spent years learning to program i

> Javascript is the ONLY language where people think they can just pick it up and use it with ZERO education first. Sure, they spent years learning to program in language X or Y, but even a couple days to learn Javascript is just too much effort. The problem is not one of putting the effort in, it's even knowing where to go. If I want to learn about how to use some new JS library/utility/webpacker, I can probably find about 30 good-quality-looking blogs/articles/documentation pages on how to do it. Most of them won't work, because they'll be out of date. This is hugely frustrating, because you don't know if it's not working because the documentation is wrong, or because you're holding it wrong. > If you think learning NPM is hard, try telling a new dev how to setup a Java or C# build by hand. If you think webpack is hard, try teaching someone the intricacies of make. Make is actually a brilliant example of something that's complex and daunting, but ultimately rewarding. It's easy to put the effort in to learn it because the maintainers don't change their minds every 2 minutes about what the Makefile syntax is, so learning how to use it is pretty straightforward. And once you know it, you can understand makefiles written both yesterday and decades ago. Give me make over webpack any day of the week. I'll put money on which dies first.