[hnbad]

> Even with async/await it's still single-threaded.

That doesn't mean anything. V8 is single-threaded but Node.js I/O is non-blocking. The reason Node became popular in the first place is that companies started adopting it to fill the gaps in their existing infrastructure (e.g. Java) to offer "realtime" (i.e. web sockets or its experimental equivalents) communication.

> IMO async/await is error-prone and isn't an ideal programming model.

What's the point of unsubstantiated statements like that (btw "x is error-prone" is an empirical claim, so prefixing it with "IMO" just means "I can't back this up and don't care if it's true") other than stirring up pointless language rivalries?

Just acknowledge that your off-hand comment about "callback hell" was anachronistic and don't try to come up with excuses to justify your preferences. I think Elixir is neat and hope it can see sufficient adoption for me to justify getting invested in it but that doesn't justify poopooing other languages, especially ones you admit not to have up-to-date knowledge about.

[nivertech]

> What's the point of unsubstantiated statements like that

That's the problem with Software Engineering in general.

> "IMO" just means "I can't back this up and don't care if it's true")

The research study that will either back or refute my claim would be prohibitively expensive and therefore impractical.

[hnbad]

My complaint isn't that you don't provide research. My complaint is that you use "IMO" to make a claim that could easily be substantiated instead.

E.g. "in my experience async/await can easily result in bugs that can be hard to detect" or "when teaching beginners, I've found that they have a harder time wrapping their head around async/await than when learning about agents" or "async/await still requires writing imperative code, requiring the programmer to pay attention to behavior that agents can abstract away through declarative code". Now, I don't know if any of those statements are true or if they reflect your experience but these are examples for what you could have said, assuming you didn't just want to say "I don't like JavaScript and I prefer Elixir or Erlang".

And yes, people just dumping strong opinions with little more substance than gut feelings is very much a problem in Software Engineering. That doesn't mean we can't work on that and practice a little more hygiene and respect for each other.

EDIT: To be clear, saying "I don't like X an I prefer Y or Z" is perfectly fine too as long as you are honest about this being your own preference rather than some grand truth about the universe. The problem comes from insisting that everyone else is wrong for not feeling the same way.