I came from a cpp background and loved it the moment I saw it. Like, you mean I just go var foo = ... and then I can put anything? No type casting?? No types??? Finally, I was free.

But I've always been more of a hacker than a real programmer. I've since learned that there are advantages to using types, static checking, etc...

I spend more time researching and weighing options than actually programming.

It's called Analysis Paralysis caused by Overchoice. Basically, the more similar options there are, the harder it is to pick.

It's true that you can easily fall into analysis paralysis when you start learning JS, but honestly things have somewhat stabilized in recent years. 10 years ago everybody was switching frameworks every 6 months, but these days we're going on 8+ years of absolute React dominance. So I guess that's it for the view layer.

The data layer has seen some movement in more recent years with Flux then GraphQL / Relay, but I think most people have settled on either Apollo or react-query now (depending on your backend).

On the backend there was basically only express.js, and I think it's still the king if you only want to write a backend.

Static websites came back in fashion with Jekyll and Github Pages so Gatsby solved that problem in js-land for a while, but nowadays Next also fulfills that niche, along with the more fullstack-oriented apps.

Svelte, Vue, Aurelia and Mithril are mostly niche frameworks. They have a dedicated, vocal fanbase (see the Svelte guy as sibling to your comment) but most of the industry has settled along the lines I've mentioned.

This is exactly why I always tell myself it'll be super fun and easy to replace a Linux distro on one of my machines, and I do the fun part of balancing release style, desktop environment, all the shiny stuff....know what stops me dead in my tracks upon install?

Deciding a file system. Because it feels like such a weighty decision with far-reaching effects.

According to internet research, they're all the right one, they're all the wrong one, they're all just fine, and don't use any of them because they'll wipe all your data. Lol

Your documentation on file system choice is either anecdotal or engineering-masters-thesis, seemingly no in-between.

I've just decided BTRFS with snapshots is great, and keep good enough backups that I shouldn't have to fiddle with the fanciest deep-knowledge features to save my system.

Might be my ADHD as well. XD

I want to add that, like you, I've become a big fan of restricting the numbers of ways to do something.

IMO, It's more time wasted choosing, more time wasted reviewing, and makes it easier to overlook errors. I want more opinionated languages and frameworks.

I feel the same way. Designing good, opinionated APIs is HARD, but it also provides the best experience for both the author and the consumer.

• Prettier is the undisputed king of JS formatters because it has no options by design. You set and forget.
• One of the reasons iOS is so successful is because they lock down their APIs and put strict standards on apps, making it hard to write something that doesn't at least look good and slot into the OS well.

Among other examples.