[CCs]

It's a matter of taste.

If you like Ruby, check out CoffeeScript.

If you don't now there's Google Dart. The IDE is pretty nice.

None of the above? Closure Compiler, jshint etc. are your friends.

Edit: a good article about "verbal vs visual" programming languages: http://ryanflorence.com/2011/2012/case-against-coffeescript/

[lowboy]

It's not just Ruby fans that like CS - it shares a lot of syntax design choices, but I think those should be taken on their own merits and not just "Durr hurrr JS for Ruby devs!!"

That article is good, and I prefer the standard operators (&&,||,!==,===) to their english counterparts. The good news is you can still use them in CS.

The other problems in that article aren't from CS itself, but rather how people write code with it. After a certain point, nested anon callbacks are terrible in JS (fat arrow complaint). Same thing with complex one-liners. You can wreak the same havok with pure JS.

[leptons]

Or you could, you know, just learn javascript like a billion other people.

[CCs]

That's the "None of the above" part.

All of these are just tools to help you get it right. Even with plain JavaScript you will need tools. jshint for example is awesome.