His argument wasn't that "it's just a tool for the job" but that JavaScript is actually a rather cool language. And it is. At any rate, I certainly like it more

His argument wasn't that "it's just a tool for the job" but that JavaScript is actually a rather cool language. And it is. At any rate, I certainly like it more than most other "scripting" languages, except maybe for Lua. I would never suggest using most of the languages on that list over JavaScript. In fact, the only ones I recommend are Lisp, Ocaml and Haskell. Maybe something like Ur/Web as well. Coffeescript is good too, but it's basically lightly improved JavaScript. I find JavaScript simpler, more expressive and generally nicer than most of the other languages listed (ignoring the ones I've never seen or used). Ultimately, JavaScript is a nice language with some warts. But, for whatever reason, the warts are blown out of proportion compared to other languages--in my experience (out of the languages I've used significantly) Python, Perl and Java all have more significant shortcomings. I think the main reason is that JavaScript position in the browser forced a lot of people to use it against their will, which leads to more complaining.