How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

I've hired people that are much better at web dev than me and let them accomplish a task with pretty much whatever tech they want to use, because i believe you shouldn't constrict a developer if you dont have to. Even for a simple app that it'd take me 20 - 30 hours for me to create in basic jQuery, bootstrap and simple PHP/MySQL, the tendency is to pull in Angular, Laravel, gulp or grunt, composer dependencies and a whole host of code for doing something really simple. It ends up becoming a frigging nightmare to maintain and deploy, i just want to do a git pull and thats it deployed, but instead i've gotta do artisan commands, migrations, grunt commands etc etc etc.

Anyway, i tell myself that what their doing is a better way of doing things and i'm just someone with outdated knowledge, because when i do it, i use basic tech and accomplish the same task in less time and with WAAAY less lines of code. While its maybe not the best practices, its simple.

I still feel like a bad coder because i'm not doing it their way. :(

I sorta agree with you. I personally like JS and really like Node. Node can actually be pretty simple and fun to mess around with and experiment. I know HN likes to hate on it, but I have fun with it.

Frontend apps always end up seeming like a mess to me especially when suing the latest "best practices" for "maintainability" (ironic as most web apps are abandoned after a couple of years). Unfortunately JS being the only language I'm productive in sorta means I'll be doing some sort of frontend for a while.

Well, in some ways yes. But experience has a value

Today people use an Arduino to flash a led, "in my time" it could be done with 2 transistors (you can do it with one + one "funny" component I guess - like a transformer)