Somebody built a photo editing app in JS which runs locally in your browser.
However, consider this, you want an app that has to use a database, you can't store everything on the client or use things like Dropbox integration. Plenty of situations where you want that, but that just can't be done with clientside js without also making your database acces keys and encryption keys available to all. So all in all, it depends on what sort of app you want to build or form your course around
This was not about building anything sensible, but just to counter the point that js allows you less than php.
I think today the only big language with is a pain to setup is perl, java and sometimes python, the rest is just a matter of ecosystem, needs and personal taste.
Nobody would write a php app without js today and you can use js server side with nodejs, same as php and php fpm.
I ... didn't say that?
>Let's be fair: you're going to be very limited in terms of the type of web site you can make with this approach compared with a PHP app via web server
Which translates to me that you have the impression that JS is limited in usage, which it simply isn't.
Things like webrtc and other node, changed the way JS can be used and for the things it can be used.
Let's be fair: you're going to be very limited in terms of the type of web site you can make with this approach compared with a PHP app via web server