They share only one defining feature? Bullshit. If we include "garbage collected", that gets rid of C and C++. If we include "dynamically typed", that gets rid

They share only one defining feature? Bullshit. If we include "garbage collected", that gets rid of C and C++. If we include "dynamically typed", that gets rid of OCaml, ML, Haskell. If we include "single namespace for functions and variables", that gets rid of Ruby, Io, and Perl. Now we're down to JavaScript, Python, and Scheme, which, yes, are all in basically the same family of languages. If we include the (admittedly subjective) feature "small language spec", that gets rid of Python, and we're left with JavaScript and Scheme as the only two mainstream languages with those particular defining features. If I were describing JavaScript to someone who was a programming language expert but somehow was never exposed to it, I would describe it as "Scheme, with C syntax, no tail calls, and a strange prototype-based object system".