[Pr3fix]

Bingo. Having one language for your front end, back end, build tools, database schema... It simplifies life a lot.

You can reuse code / modules.

You Don't suffer from context switching inherent with jumping between languages.

Also, people act like JavaScript is a bad language purely because it is not strictly typed. It's an incredibly fast and robust language with a vibrant ecosystem -- something I'd argue is more important than pure technical bullet points.

[TAForObvReasons]

> It's an incredibly fast and robust language with a vibrant ecosystem

You will find support for the most random and amazing things in JS. It is truly mindblowing.

I recently had a client request to run a process involving extracting data from an Excel file. Originally wrote it in python using openpyxl http://openpyxl.readthedocs.io/en/default/, then it turned out the client also needed XLSB support. openpyxl and xlrd don't support XLSB, but the only thing that did work was a JS library http://oss.sheetjs.com/js-xlsx/ and node module

[overcast]

Yes, it's pretty much bananas. There is SO MUCH work being put into the ecosystem, that there really isn't much you can't do at this point. There is a node module for EVERYTHING. For all of JS's warts, it's fantastic to deal with.

[WorldMaker]

For those that want to get more strict typing there are two great options in Typescript and Flow.

[Roboprog]

I like the dynamic + functional aspects of JS. I just wish that Node JS semantics were more like Erlang (which I have only admired from afar, alas - Java brain death forever!).

E.g. - concurrent operations in a single VM, but using actors exchanging immutable messages, NOT shared data and locks.

[douche]

> Having one language for your front end, back end, build tools, database schema... It simplifies life a lot

If only it were a better one.

Maybe something that was designed from the beginning to be a general-purpose programming language, and not a hacked-together-in-a-weekend scripting language intended to add low-grade interactivity to HTML, that has bloated and twisted into the mess it has become.

I'm eagerly awaiting the advent of the WebAssembly era, and honest-to-goodness real compilers. Flying Spaghetti Monster be praised, then we may be able to leave some of this nonsense behind.