I'm of two minds on this front. On the one hand, managing asynchronous code in JS is hard. On the other hand, managing asynchronous code in general is hard, and

I'm of two minds on this front. On the one hand, managing asynchronous code in JS is hard. On the other hand, managing asynchronous code in general is hard, and the only difference is that JS makes you think about what it is you're actually doing. I feel like having to make such behaviors explicit in JS has made me a better programmer in other languages because of having had to think through the timing and sequencing issues. It's just like memory management in, e.g., Java - it's not that pointers aren't there, it's just that they're mostly managed for you, and knowing how they work is beneficial to forming a better mental model.