[vhakulinen]

Your comparison of today's js/node to PHP from 20 years ago is interesting.

I wonder if javascript will be in similar place in 10-20 years that PHP is today (e.g. "its not like it used to be and things a actually quite good now")? The language it self (javascript) might be there already, but is the community anywhere close yet? SQL injections used to be the thing PHP was known for in the past but not so much these days (the community is more experienced?). Meanwhile, problems with NPM and the whole packaging situation is what javascript is known for these days, but will the be so on 20 years?

[wbl]

Javascript is a far better designed language than PHP. The identifiers don't have lengths picked because the maintainer used length as a hash function to name one notorious feature.

[vhakulinen]

Thats just one data point, and for which you could argue that javascript has not one, but two null values: null and undefined.

PHP got (or is getting?) type hinting, while javascript doesn't have such thing (typescript or flow doesn't count). Javascript is event loop based, while PHP is (afaik) request->response based. These days, javascript usually is compiled for web, while PHP just sits there on the server and you can swap out the source files when you upgrade. You could go on and on.