The tragedy of running an old Node project

The worst part isn't just that it's nearly impossible to run/update an outdated JS project, but that this process will repeat itself ad infinitum.

On the flip side, anything that uses vanilla JS without a build will most likely run just fine, probably till the end of human civilization.

I truly believe some flavour of "Javascript Classic" (some future state of JS before some big shift in syntax/mass migration to something else), C and x86 instructions will follow humanity for the rest of time. There will be javascript somewhere aboard the interstellar spaceships of the future, and we will still complain about it.

JavaScript will be killed off by WebAssembly.

Zombie JavaScript will be reduced to being glue code and then not even that.

Network effects are very strong for languages.

Better query languages than SQL could exist, but there's so much existing code and expertise out there that it's not worth the effort. Better backend languages than Java can & do exist but don't have the same enterprise popularity.

Developers, projects and companies have an immense incentives to target the most popular programming language.

JavaScript's one advantage was that it was the privileged language in the browser. It has lost that now.

JavaScript has entered its Walking Dead phase. It will gradually be displaced by all languages compiling to WebAssembly.