For example, I'd say JS/React is vastly easier than learning Cocoa/UIKit. Writing GUI code that runs on N user devices is harder than writing headless code running on a single server.
Btw, if they're getting downvoted, it's because "oh, Javascript is in the title? time for me to complain about it like people do in every JS-related HN thread!" is a tired HN comment.
On the note of the HN's perceived hatred of JS, I think its because Javascript has tried to do too many things. Despite its quirks I like Javascript in the context of the web browser, but what I dislike it that it exists in applications and on the server side. The Atom editor should not take up 200 MB and take forever to boot. But it does because instead of taking the time (like sublime text) to write a rockstar system code, they instead used electron. The feeling I get sometimes is that JS developers want to program the same way they do in the browser, everywhere.
or just bundle a html/css/js with a single go-http-server-executable that use browser as the GUI interface.
I think Electron was the webdev community's response to this, and we really haven't gotten one on the app/systems developer side besides QT.
Or to rephrase, using Electron to "emulate" a web browser is cross-platform from the perspective of the electron user, while most other gui-ing solutions in C/C++, are not necessarily cross-platform, and therefore this leads to different set of challenges.