My opinionated view, based on the ancient katra of code practitioners - seek smaller code, fewer dependencies : When moving from PHP, better to ditch 'modern'

My opinionated view, based on the ancient katra of code practitioners - seek smaller code, fewer dependencies : When moving from PHP, better to ditch 'modern' over-engineered compiled javascript, and instead use javascript at first procedurally to get acquainted, then gradually use functional idioms from a good example library such as Ramda.js to reap language and productivity benefits over PHP-the-language. I live in hope that tomorrows code thought leaders choose vue.js over the byzantine-borg-machinery that is the modern react ecosystem. The good parts of Javascript [ which dont include prototype OOP ] make for a very productive language. The node.js ecosystem is incredible for getting stuff done, I just hope we dont kill it via forced 'modernization'. We have a generation of javascript developers who have only known javascript as a compiled language.. and the current will use LLMs to spew out react apps, not apps that use standard web apis. The react+build+bundle ecosystem is so verbose that you almost need an LLM AI assistant frontend to do the grunt work. Its a sad quirk of history that python has become the lingua franca for AI .. javascript is a better language, and great at all that wrangling of data before you pass it to the matmull compiler [ a case where you actually need compilation to better fit the lower level NPU/GPU ] While Im channeling my inner boomer, I have to say, hand on heart : callbacks are more elegant than async/await/promises/then .. and they are a better conceptual match for the underlying reality. The future has been here for some time and it is multicore - perhaps our sequential mindset is preventing us from adapting as an industry to software that makes use of very many cheap cores?