[j42]

This is actually quite fascinating (and part of my upcoming book...)

Despite the obvious high/low-level language differentials, people have been managing multi-million-line C code-bases since the 80's. Then again, think of how little the build tooling has actually changed -- instead of fragmenting, you're left with llvm, gcc, make at the core of most compiled software.

JavaScript is the exact opposite with the lowest possible barrier to entry (built-in to every web browser...), and the proliferation of frameworks and libraries may be due to this in combination with the lack of fundamental understanding of design patterns that can scale. Lots of people trying to partially solve symptoms, missing the forest for the trees.

Theoretically there's nothing preventing good patterns in high-level UI development, but I'm not quite sure it's been done right, yet and have no idea when the dust will settle.

[manyoso]

Javascript and other dynamic language like it are very good prototyping languages and for developing a quick mock-up to explore the pros/cons of a potential solution to a problem. But the lack of type checking and proper encapsulation turn into big headaches when scaled to a large app with even a few more junior developers.

Without a compiler/type checker to help spot obvious problems in code runtime exceptions explode. This happens even for senior developers. And the lack of proper encapsulation other than by convention can/does lead to an explosion of the surface area of source code that a dev needs to know and be familiar with in order to refactor and make changes to large codebases which makes for very brittle large apps.

Hence, I look forward to new languages targeting web assembly that will be more amenable to creating/maintaining large scale and long lived apps.