> JS is the new PHP. It's really popular (i.e. lots of n00bs) and not at all elegant, so the programmer elite regard it with derision.
I would love to find a language I consider more elegant than modern JS/TS. Haven't seen anything yet though. I also question your claim that it's the "elite" who regard JS with derision. Fabrice is presumably fine with it considering he spent valuable time writing an engine for it.
I don't think JS/TS is that bad, but it's certainly pretty far from elegant. TS adds decent type support which helps tamp down on dynamic complexity but rust, go, kotlin, c#, swift, ocml even java are all much more elegant languages. I realize that elegance is largely subjective so I won't belabor the point, but it's a pretty widely accepted subjective assessment.
I would love to find a language I consider more elegant than modern JS/TS. Haven't seen anything yet though. I also question your claim that it's the "elite" who regard JS with derision. Fabrice is presumably fine with it considering he spent valuable time writing an engine for it.