[k__]

JavaScript is a very special language, I think.

When I learned it in 2011 it was already strange to me, coming from years of work with PHP. Also, Java and C in university.

It was nerver meant to build big applications and had a few issues that many people tried to assert.

Old implementations which needed stuff like jQuery to normalize the APIs, no native module system so everyone implemented their own stuff (ExtJS, CommonJS, AMD, etc.), strange scoping rules forcing variable aliases and wrapper functions all over the place, functions as first class objects intruducing people to a new world of possibilities with ideas from FP, prototype based OO which comes with a different set of problems than class based OO.

The whole "we want new stuff now" movement forced many tools onto us to build our software, which before could simply be run in a browser without compilation. So we got rid of a few problems with a whole set of new problems.