I think the "loose and flexible" aspect is why so many people think it's a joke. For the longest time, the only Javascript I learned was from online tutorials,

I think the "loose and flexible" aspect is why so many people think it's a joke. For the longest time, the only Javascript I learned was from online tutorials, and 90% of those were complete and utter crud, showing different ways of doing the same thing that were still acceptable because of how accommodating Javascript is with syntax errors. Because of the fact that no two tutorials were the same, I never wanted to touch Javascript. Later I picked up an O'Reilly book about "the good bits" of Javascript and enjoyed it immensely, but the amount of parseable cruft out there doesn't help up-and-coming JS coders in the slightest.