> Nowadays if you start a new Javascript project you need to setup, vite/esbuild/webpack, eslint/oxlint/biome, prettier, typescript, etc, that is a ton of dependencies that YOU need to maintain for years
That's a choice YOU make, not everyone makes that choice, especially because they want to be able to continue working on a project for months/years without accruing automatic technical debt as all those projects move forward without actually thinking about backwards compatibility.
Right, but that’s why languages like Rust have an excellent DX. There is no complex choice about what linter, formatter, test runner, doc builder, or package manager to use. These at all such common requirements for building software at scale with lots of contributors that the language tooling just includes them. It’s not hard to maintain, because the language toolchain is so foundational it needs to be stable.
JS doesn’t have anything like that, which is why projects like Deno, Bun, Biome, etc are interesting. These projects explore how JS can also get a great out of the box experience without requiring the complex setup and maintenance steps that so many existing tools require.
Besides, professionally, you normally don’t make the choice in a vacuum. Linters, package managers, testing, bundling/building, type safety, and even formatting are all very useful in big projects with lots of people. So you often don’t get to say “ah we just won’t have unit tests because jest doesn’t care enough about backwards compatibility.”
That's a choice YOU make, not everyone makes that choice, especially because they want to be able to continue working on a project for months/years without accruing automatic technical debt as all those projects move forward without actually thinking about backwards compatibility.