[achierius]

JavaScript isn't the only programming language around. I'm not the strongest around with JS either but I can figure it out as necessary -- knowing C/C++/Java/whatever means you can still grok "this looks better than that" for most cases.

[defatigable]

Yep. I have plenty of experience in languages that use C-style syntax, enough to easily understand code written in other languages that occur nearby in the syntactical family tree. I'm not steeped in JS enough to know the weird gotchas of the type system, or know the standard library well, etc. But I can read the code fine.

If I'd asked an AI coding tool to write something up for me in Haskell, I would have no idea if it had done a good job.

[esailija]

I don't think so. Imagine it was vice versa, someone saying they knew JS and were weak at C/C++/Java.

[defatigable]

This doesn't sound right to me. If someone who were expert in JS looked at a relatively simple C++ program, I think they could reasonably well tell if the quality of code were good or not. They wouldn't be able to, e.g., detect bugs from default value initialization, memory leaks, etc. But so long as the code didn't do any crazy templating stuff they'd be able to analyze it at a rough "this algorithm seems sensible" level".

Analogously I'm quite proficient at C++, and I can easily look at a small JS program and tell if it's sensible. But if you give me even a simple React app I wouldn't be able to understand it without a lot of effort (I've had this experience...)

I agree with your broad point: C/C++/Java are certainly much more complex than JS and I would expect someone expert in them to have a much easier time picking up JS than the reverse. But given very high overlap in syntax between the four I think anyone who's proficient in one can grok the basics of the others.