How JavaScript is Becoming the Worst Language

JavaScript, once celebrated as the savior of the web, is increasingly finding itself at the center of frustration for developers around the globe. What started as a lightweight scripting tool for making web pages dynamic has ballooned into an omnipresent, sprawling, and often inconsistent language that powers much of the modern internet. However, many developers argue that JavaScript’s evolution has introduced more complexity, confusion, and chaos than true progress. In this article, we'll dive deep into why JavaScript — once considered indispensable — is now viewed by some as one of the worst programming languages to work with.

A Brief History of JavaScript

Before diving into its shortcomings, it’s important to understand JavaScript’s origins. JavaScript was created in 1995 by Brendan Eich at Netscape. It was designed to be lightweight, easy to integrate into browsers, and approachable for beginners. Initially, it was never meant to handle large-scale applications or server-side code. It was simply a way to make websites a little more interactive without needing to reload the page constantly. Yet, as web applications grew more sophisticated, JavaScript was forced to evolve. Instead of creating a new language better suited to the demands of massive applications, the industry kept expanding JavaScript’s role beyond its original scope. This rapid expansion without a firm architectural foundation is where many of its current problems began.

Inconsistent Language Design

One of JavaScript’s most glaring weaknesses is its inconsistencies. From type coercion quirks to bizarre behaviors in object handling, developers frequently run into issues that defy common sense. Consider simple examples like:

false == 0 // true
false === 0 // false
[] + [] // ""
[] + {} // "[object Object]"
{} + [] // 0

These confusing results stem from JavaScript’s aggressive type coercion, a relic of its early design when flexibility was prioritized over precision. The loose typing system is both a blessing and a curse. While it allows for quick prototyping, it also leads to unexpected bugs and enormous amounts of defensive coding. Developers must constantly be vigilant, second-guessing the behavior of even the simplest operations.

The Fatigue of Constant Change

The JavaScript ecosystem is notorious for its fast pace of change. Frameworks, libraries, and best practices evolve so quickly that it feels nearly impossible to keep up. Today, React is dominant; tomorrow, it could be Svelte or SolidJS. Consider how many developers have had to learn: jQuery AngularJS (Angular 1.x) Angular (2+) React Vue Svelte Next.js, Nuxt.js, Astro, Remix, SolidJS... the list goes on. Even the language itself has undergone major transformations with ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) and beyond, introducing features like arrow functions, classes, modules, async/await, and optional chaining. While many of these are improvements, the constant need to re-learn basic language structures places a heavy burden on developers. The ecosystem's volatility contributes to "JavaScript fatigue," a term coined to describe the exhaustion that comes with endlessly keeping up with the "new shiny thing."

Bloated and Complicated Toolchains

Modern JavaScript development often requires an overwhelming amount of tooling just to get started: Package managers like npm, yarn, pnpm Build tools like Webpack, Rollup, Vite, Parcel Transpilers like Babel Linters like ESLint Type checkers like TypeScript Formatters like Prettier Test runners like Jest, Mocha, Vitest Framework-specific CLIs like Create React App, Vue CLI, Next.js CLI In theory, all of these tools help manage the complexity of developing sophisticated applications. In practice, they often introduce their own layers of configuration hell, version mismatches, plugin dependencies, and obscure bugs. A simple "Hello World" project in JavaScript today might involve dozens of megabytes of node_modules and hundreds of package dependencies. This situation feels absurd to many developers, especially those coming from more minimalistic environments like Go or Rust.

Security Nightmares

Due to the reliance on npm packages and the ease of publishing packages, JavaScript projects are especially vulnerable to supply chain attacks. Incidents like the left-pad debacle (where an unpublished 11-line utility broke thousands of builds) or the event-stream backdoor (where a popular npm package was compromised) show how fragile the ecosystem is. Because JavaScript applications are built on top of countless small, deeply nested dependencies, it is often impossible to audit all third-party code. One compromised package can impact thousands of projects almost instantaneously. In addition, JavaScript’s permissive execution environment (especially in browsers) creates further security challenges like: Cross-site scripting (XSS) Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) Code injection vulnerabilities As a result, developers must be constantly vigilant and employ an ever-growing list of security best practices and defensive coding techniques.

Performance Problems

Although JavaScript engines like Google’s V8 have made tremendous performance improvements, JavaScript remains slower than compiled languages like C++, Rust, or even Java. This isn’t surprising — JavaScript is an interpreted, garbage-collected, dynamically typed language. It wasn’t designed with raw speed in mind. In some contexts, particularly in large-scale frontend applications, poor JavaScript performance leads to:

• Janky animations
• Slow page loads
• Memory leaks
• High CPU usage on mobile devices

In the backend world, Node.js has brought JavaScript to servers, but it remains less efficient for CPU-bound tasks compared to alternatives like Go or Rust. While Node.js shines for IO-bound workloads, it struggles when heavy computation is involved.

The TypeScript Bandage

To mitigate JavaScript’s type-related problems, many developers have turned to TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript that adds static typing. TypeScript certainly improves code reliability, maintainability, and developer experience. However, it also adds another layer of complexity to an already complex ecosystem. Many projects today require setting up and maintaining TypeScript configurations, dealing with type declaration files, and wrestling with complex generics. TypeScript’s flexibility often leads to extremely complicated type gymnastics that can be as confusing as the bugs it aims to prevent. Thus, while TypeScript helps, it also highlights JavaScript’s original shortcomings by needing to exist at all.

The Fallacy of "JavaScript Everywhere"

One of the driving forces behind JavaScript's popularity was the promise of "JavaScript everywhere": you could use the same language on the client, server, and even in native apps (via frameworks like React Native or Electron). However, this ideal has not aged well. Server-side JavaScript (Node.js) is efficient for certain tasks but ill-suited for heavy computations. Mobile apps built with JavaScript (React Native, Ionic, Cordova) often underperform compared to native apps. Desktop apps built with Electron (e.g., Slack, VS Code) tend to be bloated memory hogs. Instead of a clean unification, we have a patchwork of mismatched standards, performance trade-offs, and confusing context switches.

Developer Experience vs. User Experience

A lot of modern JavaScript tooling is focused on making life easier for developers. Hot module reloading, automated state management, component libraries — all geared toward making development faster and more pleasant. Unfortunately, this often comes at the expense of the end-user experience.

• Web pages are heavier than ever, with megabytes of JavaScript to parse and execute.
• Poor performance on mobile devices is rampant.
• Slow initial loads, even with techniques like code splitting, are common.

In a rush to optimize developer happiness, we’ve neglected the core mission: creating fast, reliable, accessible applications for users.

Conclusion: Is JavaScript Beyond Redemption?

Despite its many flaws, JavaScript is not going away anytime soon. Its massive installed base, ubiquity in browsers, and sheer momentum mean that it will remain a central part of web development for the foreseeable future. However, developers are increasingly aware of its shortcomings. New languages like WebAssembly, Rust (via wasm-bindgen), and even Deno (a secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript by Node.js’s original creator) are nibbling at the edges of JavaScript’s dominance. Frameworks like Svelte and SolidJS are pushing for more efficient, less bloated frontend architectures that compile away much of the JavaScript runtime burden. Tools like esbuild and Vite are attempting to simplify build processes and reduce complexity. In the long run, JavaScript may remain the "assembly language of the web," but future applications might write less and less raw JavaScript directly. Developers might shift toward languages and tools that offer stronger guarantees, better performance, and less cognitive overhead. JavaScript’s story is far from over, but its days as the darling of the programming world seem to be waning. As we build the future of the web, we must critically evaluate whether JavaScript is a crutch we continue to lean on out of convenience — or a relic of the past we're finally ready to move beyond.