This is a fairly old argument. The single universal programming language that anyone could pick up and use led to BASIC on the low-end and PL/1 on the high-end.

This is a fairly old argument. The single universal programming language that anyone could pick up and use led to BASIC on the low-end and PL/1 on the high-end. Neither is used much anymore. Neither appealed much to a wide audience of non-programmers, though BASIC came close. And neither were anything near universal even in their heyday. If server-side JS is "our esperanto" that's damning with faint praise. Esperanto is not a universal language, it doesn't fill any actual need, and it hasn't encouraged more people to read or write.