I agree with you. At a fundamental level, I suppose the same code in JavaScript would be a simple for loop and a console.log() statement that could be run from

I agree with you. At a fundamental level, I suppose the same code in JavaScript would be a simple for loop and a console.log() statement that could be run from the command line using Node.js. It isn't quite as easy, but it teaches better programming practices and isn't that much harder. The DOM is definitely another story though. Another problem I think JavaScript poses for beginners is the community itself. It seems like nobody is interested in perfecting existing libraries but are rather focused on reinventing their own wheels. For example, just for handling projects we have Grunt, Gulp, Brunch, WebPack, Parcel, etc. This kind of instability and fragmentation within a community creates a problem for new developers, because they don't know which direction to go. I volunteer to teach women and children to write code. I've found that solid communities that embrace and continuously improve a small set of productive libraries and frameworks, such as Elixir, Phoenix, and Mix, make it much easier for beginners to learn and be productive. I do teach JavaScript as well, but I've reduced my focus to just the core language because too many students were overwhelmed by all the libraries and frameworks that solve the exact same problems and complained about that during the courses.