Before the node.js days working with backend was more or less a completely separate skillset than writing frontend code (e.g. PHP backend and jQuery-driven frontend)
That's true but I don't think that's true for the reasons implied.
In my opinion the "fontend" skillset has become closer to the backend skillset around the time where nodejs became popular, but that's not because you can code the backend with javascript, it's mostly because doing frontend work now involves a lot of the same logic that's needed for the backend.
If you'd asked an HTML/CSS/jQuery developer to build the PHP backend of an app 15 years ago, they would have had a very hard time. But now take a modern front-end developer who's building PWAs with Typescript : they already work with OOP, They use MVC, they know reactive programming, they've probably already used some SQL with an embedded SQLite database, maybe even an ORM... So if you suddenly ask them to write the backend (be it with PHP, NodeJS, Python or Go), they just have a new language/framework to learn but they already know most of the concepts.
That's true but I don't think that's true for the reasons implied.
In my opinion the "fontend" skillset has become closer to the backend skillset around the time where nodejs became popular, but that's not because you can code the backend with javascript, it's mostly because doing frontend work now involves a lot of the same logic that's needed for the backend.
If you'd asked an HTML/CSS/jQuery developer to build the PHP backend of an app 15 years ago, they would have had a very hard time. But now take a modern front-end developer who's building PWAs with Typescript : they already work with OOP, They use MVC, they know reactive programming, they've probably already used some SQL with an embedded SQLite database, maybe even an ORM... So if you suddenly ask them to write the backend (be it with PHP, NodeJS, Python or Go), they just have a new language/framework to learn but they already know most of the concepts.
Great point! I agree with you, those are kinda like two sides of the same coin imho :)