Discussion on: Node.js has a higher cognitive load than Java

And I know that's going to be a hugely unpopular opinion

It's interesting that this is a controversial opinion. Javascript is a language with multiple competing module systems (with the official module system not even available in most runtimes), a nearly non-existent standard library, and a multitude of confusing semantics (variable hoisting, this binding, implicit conversions).

The highly dynamic nature of javascript means static analysis is imprecise, which affects tooling. Large applications need to use bundlers which have a massive learning curve of their own. In order to leverage modern features we often need to run our code through a transpiler that fills in missing functionality. The built in date and time functionality is based on a flawed java implementation circa 1995. It's a tricky language to optimize and there are a number of considerations that need to be taken into account in order to prevent deoptimization.

I could keep going on, but I think the point is clear: Javascript the language is objectively bad. Nobody, given sufficient time and forethought would create a language like javascript in its current form. It is impressive for a lot of other reasons, namely how it came to be and how much effort has gone into making it reasonably usable, but that's a consequence of it being ubiquitous and the most legitimate "write once run everywhere" runtime.