> The entire reason we have people trying to cram JavaScript everywhere is that, for some reason, it sparks joy for them.

Wait really? I feel like it's just "you literally have no choice for frontend" and the various side effects of that.

That would explain frontend, yes. But that would not explain NodeJS, JavaScript for embedded microcontrollers, and so many more.

Some might say it's Stockholm syndrome, but then there's the Python developers doing the same thing everywhere. And the LISP enthusiasts. So unless there's a lot of Stockholm syndrome (although it's not out of the question when it comes to LISP), a lot of it is easily explained by "me like language here, me go put language elsewhere to keep language"

I think that's just entrenchment at work. When the majority of your developers only know x languages, and one of them is always js, you tend to work by the lowest comments denominator and the tools that everyone can work with are the ones that stick.

You're overthinking it. We have Javascript on the server because Javascript was a very commonly known language already (due to being the only choice for web) and the average programmer (one who doesn't post on these forums) is not going to bother to learn another language if they don't have to.

The easiest way to turn front end developers into full stack developers was to let them use the same language for everything, and it was easier to bring JavaScript to the server than to bring any other language to the web.

These days with WASM and JavaScript as compilation targets it might have been avoided, but it's already too late.

Anyway I rambled a bit but the point is "joy" has nothing to do with it.

I think that's just entrenchment at work. When the majority of your developers only know x languages, and one of them is always js, you tend to work by the lowest comments denominator and the tools that everyone can work with are the ones that stick.

That's true, and I also think it's a mistake.

Any decent developer can become competent with a new language in a matter of weeks, whereas making a large application with the wrong choice of language and tooling can become a maintenance nightmare. Given how difficult it is to verify JavaScript programs as "correct", its use on the server has always riled me up.

> But that would not explain NodeJS, JavaScript for embedded microcontrollers, and so many more.

I'm only going to address NodeJS because I think that niche projects that target niche workloads are just unrelated.

I believe it does explain NodeJS. The idea is simple - your frontend engineers can own your edge services/ APIs. They're already heavily invested in JS and, at least at one point, there was a theory that unifying languages across frontend + edge made sense for other reasons.

Some people really just learn one language.

> Some people really just learn one language.

I think that's a gross oversimplification. My colleagues know JavaScript, TypeScript and ECMAScript, as well as YAML, HTML and CSS.

I'm not trying to be mean but are you being sarcastic? I... can't tell...

At this point, I can't really tell either.

> I am convinced that the way to get a software developer to do anything is to just play on that need for joy.

Works outside software development too.

I think the Javascript example is more about what people are already familiar with. Same goes for languages like Python. Other languages can't "spark joy" if you're not familiar or comfortable with them.

I agree with this. I use Fantasque Sans Mono for the same reason - k with a loop makes me feel warm and fuzzy for some reason.