I came back to frontend development after a break of 10 years. Back then there was jQuery, CSS and HTML.
I found that the complexity of the tooling had increased 20-fold. All these build and task runners that were cool for a year and then a new one came along.
Those were the costs, but what was the upside? It seems that you can do maybe 10%-20% "more" than back then. It seems to me that this is a very very steep price to pay.
March 2020: Finding the body of my mother in the basement. She had died suddenly and unexpectedly that morning. The neighbours were alarmed because they couldn't reach her. I went to investigate. She was 74, so she didn't go too early and had a good death.
I realised that my life will be over relatively soon too. I decided to make it count (in little ways). Quit my job. Became a freelancer. Made a big effort to cut bullshit from my life. To give less fucks about irrelevant stuff. To be happier in simple and sustainable ways.
My favourite quote: "We all have 2 lives, the second begins when we realise we have only 1".
I firmly hope that javascript has peaked. The complexity of the tooling has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 10 years with subjectively very little to show for it.
Anyone starting out with backend webdev should learn Python Flask. There is no gentler and more thorough way of learning web fundamentals, whilst still being productive from day 1.
To continue this metaphor: If I was hiring a skipper to sail my family over the Atlantic, I would absolutely hire the "lame" 40 year old and not the hip 20 year old