I don't mind ES6+ syntax. I'd even say that the syntax alone makes for a pretty great developer experience, but I still wouldn't say it's a great language altogether.
I think a fundamental problem with the language is that it's not particularly memory-efficient, and it's hard to make it memory-efficient. The V8 team has done a lot to make it better but they are still limited by the design of the language.
That's particularly painful in mobile where memory is constrained, and on the desktop it's making the typical 4 - 8GB of RAM less and less sufficient. That's important when discussing why Javascript is still an issue when using stuff like Electron and React Native.
One of the richest companies in the world with very good engineers made a supercomplex engine which nobody understands and looks like they cannot make it better and we use it happily as given - something's wrong here.
I don't understand what's wrong? People use software without knowing how it's coded under the hood all the time? The V8 code is here if you want: https://github.com/v8/v8
I think a fundamental problem with the language is that it's not particularly memory-efficient, and it's hard to make it memory-efficient. The V8 team has done a lot to make it better but they are still limited by the design of the language.
That's particularly painful in mobile where memory is constrained, and on the desktop it's making the typical 4 - 8GB of RAM less and less sufficient. That's important when discussing why Javascript is still an issue when using stuff like Electron and React Native.