I am using Django and I do understand the sentiment.
But everything old is new again.
Today there is better tooling than ever for these tools. I am using Django with htmx + alpine.js and sending HTML instead of JSON. Breaking free from JSON REST APIs is a huge productivity boost.
Also wanted to mention Django & Python because Python is evidently doing even better in the age of AI and building back-end heavy ML apps with it is much than in Javascript land.
I feel for you. I'm a Rails developer and I recently joined a Django project... Django feels so far behind Rails... But everyone has their own preference and opinion...
But everything old is new again.
Today there is better tooling than ever for these tools. I am using Django with htmx + alpine.js and sending HTML instead of JSON. Breaking free from JSON REST APIs is a huge productivity boost.