For what it's worth, I can confirm that a lot of backend developers look down to frontend developers, but if you dig a little deeper you often (not always) see that frontend development is simply intimidating to them and they rather stick to what they know. At least in my country/region this leads to a lack of good frontend developers; good developers being those that apply well-known and established (backend) practices to the frontend.

> good developers being those that apply well-known and established (backend) practices to the frontend

100% agree with this. From my experience good front end developers are much harder to come by in silicon valley. We use a general coding interview process, and really struggle finding experienced front end developers because its a hard position.

When I have to touch javascript, I break everything, beg for help, then run back into my enterprise java code. This elitist backend attitude to me seems to stem from insecurities of us nerds. I personally feel inferior to front end developers, the ones I know are freaking magicians.

really? for some years I haven't noticed any difference between frontend and backend. that is because both frontend and backend are in js probably...

Most "enterprise" application backends are still written in Java (and probably C#) combined with a frontend based on Angular, sometimes Reacts or older technologies. I am not aware of any Node-based backend at any of our customers (medium/large German companies), except maybe for some smaller parts of the backend (microservices architecure etc.)

Ah, also, not sure if you were joking, but I don't think using JavaScript (TypeScript, that is) in both frontend and backend is a bad idea. Having a shared (domain) model can be a real boon. Admittedly, JavaScript lacks a few things that is offered by Java and the like that makes not yet fit for larger applications though (say DI, modularization and so on).