Validation in two different languages is solved by defining your models using a framework that supports proper validation. Moreover, you should do that for all application. Don't make me wait for your server to respond to know that I mistyped a credit card number. Validation on the client side and on the server side is a solved problem and if your application has any significant amount of validation code compared to all of your code, your application is way too simple.
It is old fashioned. It's also backwards when it comes to mobile apps. Phones and tablets have lots of horsepower, but bandwidth is low and more importantly latency is high. I can almost buy that when you expand a menu the whole page reloads if it happens over Google Fiber and your server adds no latency, but when the roundtrip to the server takes 2-3 seconds, I am not using your app.
I will repeat: if you are running a mostly static website, HTML + HTTP is the way to go. There are still plenty of web apps that work just fine that way (basic CRUD mostly). However, there is a category of apps that are much better served by running client side with a well-defined API to the server. This provides you with a true MVC setup and makes for much cleaner code. Trying to put together a JavaScript driven app where you reload pages is something I have experienced quite a bit over the past decade. It's such a pain that it should not be attempted. Angular and friends make single page apps viable and much easier than the jQuery + HTML + Ajax apps.
I don't blame you for disliking JavaScript: it's an odd little language with some really bad parts. Perhaps try one of the other languages that compiles down to JS? I hear CoffeeScript is very nice.
It is old fashioned. It's also backwards when it comes to mobile apps. Phones and tablets have lots of horsepower, but bandwidth is low and more importantly latency is high. I can almost buy that when you expand a menu the whole page reloads if it happens over Google Fiber and your server adds no latency, but when the roundtrip to the server takes 2-3 seconds, I am not using your app.
I will repeat: if you are running a mostly static website, HTML + HTTP is the way to go. There are still plenty of web apps that work just fine that way (basic CRUD mostly). However, there is a category of apps that are much better served by running client side with a well-defined API to the server. This provides you with a true MVC setup and makes for much cleaner code. Trying to put together a JavaScript driven app where you reload pages is something I have experienced quite a bit over the past decade. It's such a pain that it should not be attempted. Angular and friends make single page apps viable and much easier than the jQuery + HTML + Ajax apps.
I don't blame you for disliking JavaScript: it's an odd little language with some really bad parts. Perhaps try one of the other languages that compiles down to JS? I hear CoffeeScript is very nice.