I think the big difference with JS is that if you're doing just about anything in Web Dev these days, you MUST use JS (with a few exceptions). Don't like PHP?

I think the big difference with JS is that if you're doing just about anything in Web Dev these days, you MUST use JS (with a few exceptions). Don't like PHP? Try Python. Why not Go, Scala or Rust? Don't like Ruby? Move to Elixir (no really, do it! you won't regret it) But with JS you're stuck with JS - at least Typescript makes things a bit more sane. So until the browser monopoly ends and something supplants JS as one of the only ways to make a dynamic website, it will have to take the heat. The best experience I've encountered is with LiveView in the Elixir/Phoenix world. It still needs JS for the plumbing (websockets) but I no longer have to write JS. Happy days!