The thing that backend devs don't realize is that frontend is not easy. A frontend dev builds something that will be used by a HUMAN, while a backend dev builds something that will be used by a PROGRAM. Related to the comment, things were changing a lot because there is not one single way to do things, as in iOS/Android. There is no standard imposed by a huge private company like Apple or Google. Everyone is free to reinvent the wheel.
Facebook did something super valuable, that is ReactJS, and this is becoming the _de facto standard_. ReactJS is simple, opinionated, and supported by a large corporation. Thanks to ReactJS a new ecosystem was born, and now finally you have many projects gravitating around it, and this is good. It's just a matter of time IMO.
I strongly disagree with _"the browser is a bad app platform and javascript is a bad language"_. JavaScript has its quirks, but it's also really plesant to work with if you don't do weird shit like `isNaN('wft' - 1) // it's true`. The browser is a great virtual machine that is democratizing the web. If you are doing things right, you can have graceful degradation (it degrade gracefully to a lower level of user in experience in older browsers) to increase the audience of your web app, from the dev in SF with gigabit internet to someone living in a rural area in a not so tech advanced country. This of course has a cost, that is spending time developing your app.
Facebook did something super valuable, that is ReactJS, and this is becoming the _de facto standard_. ReactJS is simple, opinionated, and supported by a large corporation. Thanks to ReactJS a new ecosystem was born, and now finally you have many projects gravitating around it, and this is good. It's just a matter of time IMO.
I strongly disagree with _"the browser is a bad app platform and javascript is a bad language"_. JavaScript has its quirks, but it's also really plesant to work with if you don't do weird shit like `isNaN('wft' - 1) // it's true`. The browser is a great virtual machine that is democratizing the web. If you are doing things right, you can have graceful degradation (it degrade gracefully to a lower level of user in experience in older browsers) to increase the audience of your web app, from the dev in SF with gigabit internet to someone living in a rural area in a not so tech advanced country. This of course has a cost, that is spending time developing your app.