Well, that was a language inconsistency, not an issue with the DOM. I like working with JS but I don't know why the two operands aren't commutative in my examp

Well, that was a language inconsistency, not an issue with the DOM. I like working with JS but I don't know why the two operands aren't commutative in my example. The DOM is a headache but luckily smart people have made plenty of libraries to abstract that away. What we're left with is a language with a very expressive and powerful core like you said, but there are still some oddities.