JS is so good for APIS because of its dynamic JS objects. If you then take also a document storage you don't need any ORM anymore and write your entire API in 5 mins. Rails was a nightmare compared. JS lets you do stuff yourself. You don't any framework holding your hand. Maybe that's your problem.
First time I hear options are bad. Many options and competition lead to best products. There are enough posts and people who tell you what you should use.
Or just use npmtrends or npmcharts. 1 second later you know what is going on and what module you should pick.
Why are people criticizing something they have never used?
> Java, C#, Rails, and to some extent Python are much saner choices.
Python not as scalable, Rails is stagnating, the ecosystem doesn't evolve anymore/dying, doesn't play well with SPAs, C# weak to none ecosystem outside of Windows and devs earn a fraction, Java verbose and dev productivity subpar (there was a reason people came up with Scala), Java devs also suffer lower salaries
In JS there is a lot of convention but on a micro level. The times of monolithic Rails apps which have strict conventions are over and it's good: Too much magic and strict conventions often forced devs into patterns which didn't match the use case. Even experienced Rails devs tried to solve every problem the same way.
You also confusing matters. You need Webpack, Babel etc for the frontend not the backend. And even in the frontend it got abstracted away by things like creat-react-app. So you shouldn't them see them too often.
I love Github for open source and the community but for private repos I like But bucket more. Don't know why but the overall interface feels cleaner, less cluttered.
This feels like an orchestrated upvoting and content marketing flash mob from the Elixir Slack channel. Google Trends shows that Elixir is declining. I love new languages but don't like to be fooled.