2008: Don't build your server-side application with JavaScript. Are you f#@cking crazy?

2018: Build your server-side application with JavaScript. It's probably one of the most practical choices you can make.

Regardless of whether or not you believe the 2018 statement, it's plausible at the very least. Yet I find myself observing people being overly caught up in past advice, even when the entire ecosystem has evolved around that specific advice.

JavaScript stands out to me in this regard. If I were you, I would avoid all things 2008 JavaScript like the plague. But 2018 JavaScript is practically an entirely different language. The ecosystem remains a bit wild for my tastes, but it's no longer true that the language itself is unworkable.

This is a time-travel joke built around Japan's industrial advances

Past scars get more attention than they need to. For some of us, we never want to see JavaScript again in our lives, but 2018 JavaScript is a sensible choice with wonderful tooling. Things aren't perfect but it's no longer mangled spaghetti as a default. We figured a lot of stuff out, we built entire new runtimes. We wrote a lot of new code.

JavaScript is the example here, but this applies in general. New software concepts keep old names. Old best practices rot without getting appropriately discarded. The case that really made me want to make this point was one particular result from the State of the Web Survey we just wrapped up.

25 percent of teams still support IE 10 and under!! I'm all for browser support but this is about 0.5% of browser activity being supported by 25% of teams! This is absolutely bonkers to me. There are a lot of use cases that could mandate supporting these old browsers, but I am certain it is not 25% of cases.

People support older versions of IE because they made the choice and never revisited it. People hate JavaScript because they had some bad experiences and never let old scars heal.

You don't have to love JavaScript, I'm not a big JS person myself, but the old joke is dead.

I think this is one of the all-time funnier jokes in our industry. If anything, I mourn the fact that we can't complain about JavaScript like we used to.