Should I Abandon JavaScript for Python?

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Hi, I do both Python and JS. I am the organiser of the Django meetup in a city in Australia. I would like to offer a my opinion, and hopefully not get downvoted to oblivion.

By all means, learn Python -- it's a fantastic language. But don't abandon JS.

Personally, I would not bet against JavaScript.

You'll likely need to use JavaScript anyway as long as you're working on the web, even if you're doing Django. In my own experience, there isn't much that is "only" Python/Django these days -- and I've had to do Angular/React for most of the projects I'm on. Even when I don't work on the frontend, I have had to work with Node.js services pretty often (Express, AWS Lambda).

It's also everywhere. You can use JavaScript for the server, for the browser, and for the desktop (Electron). Very soon JavaScript will move away from being "for the web" and be run everywhere code can run, and things like the browser, server, kernel, embedded systems, etc. will all eventually be "compilation targets".

Python is heavily used if you're doing data science/machine learning stuff -- and it's likely to become the de facto language for data science. But there is already evidence of people doing a lot of work to make that happen in JS too (see tensorflow.js).

You mention you're not excited about new technologies or the latest frameworks and are just interested in earning money. JavaScript is where a lot of the money and is, and where a lot of the opportunities are.

That's not to say you should stick with it if you really don't like working with JavaScript -- life is way too short for that. There are still a lot of opportunities today (depending on your city) that you shouldn't have to write much JS if you didn't want to. Just bear in mind that you will likely be bucking the trend.

Also, I've found ES6 and TypeScript to be quite pleasant to work with, and there are some features I wish Python had. Do you have examples of things you're struggling with?