While I agree some of that sugar does a lot to clean up a lot of boilerplate code that we used to have to write, such as arrow functions retaining this in scope

While I agree some of that sugar does a lot to clean up a lot of boilerplate code that we used to have to write, such as arrow functions retaining this in scope without having to do binds or "self = this" stuff we used to have to do. as well as adding let which allows you to properly scope variables. It is sugar and the language was perfectly usable without them but they sure do tidy up the code we write.