> This is not to say that JS is shit but both JS and Rails have their place. If you want flexibility, you need JS. If you want iteration speed and dev productivity you need Rails.
Not true at all. Rails can be extremely flexible; it's all modular and you can reduce it down to almost nothing if you want. Javascript's only place is to run in the browser; it lost its way once people decided to make a server platform out of it. JS is far too forgiving of mistakes to be running backend code, full stop. ES6 and up are vast improvements but the damage has already been done.
And in any case I have yet to work in an environment where I am not writing at least some ES5...
Not true at all. Rails can be extremely flexible; it's all modular and you can reduce it down to almost nothing if you want. Javascript's only place is to run in the browser; it lost its way once people decided to make a server platform out of it. JS is far too forgiving of mistakes to be running backend code, full stop. ES6 and up are vast improvements but the damage has already been done.
And in any case I have yet to work in an environment where I am not writing at least some ES5...