[voodootrucker]

As a seasoned developer who was in early in JavaScript (writing a SPA framework before there were SPAs, creating complex CAD software in WebGL pre 1.0), I can say there are a lot of good, and some really really bad things about it.

As a former boot camp instructor, I can say there are many, many people who call it a first language, and a significant subset of these people that worship intricate knowledge of it's faults as if they were features.

I tried very hard while instructing JavaScript to understand why the faults were there and how to avoid them and why detailed knowledge was no longer relevant thanks to many smart people spending lots of energy to make them not matter any more, e.g.: q: "when should I use var?" a: "never, use let or const to avoid hoisting"

Unfortunately, I think one just has to learn a few more languages before they can take an objective view of their 1st.

[morelisp]

I'm starting to think it's a blessing if your first language "dies." Anyone who truly tied their personal/professional identity to K&R C, Pascal, Smalltalk, CLisp, even today ObjC or Perl - will have long since retired in frustration. Distance brings clarity, and as much as I liked (and still like!) some of those languages it's very easy to see the unfortunate parts of them once you are working three, four, ten toolchains after out of necessity - and that brings more understanding how unfortunate your current tools also are.

Unfortunately it seems like JS developers will likely never know this joy.