You seem quick to denigrate JavaScript, and programmers who willingly choose it, wherever you can. But with regard to the kind of complexity the OP discusses, w

You seem quick to denigrate JavaScript, and programmers who willingly choose it, wherever you can. But with regard to the kind of complexity the OP discusses, which roughly translates to added cognitive load, it's not at all clear that JavaScript is worse than C++ -- and I have real experience with both. To avoid dismissing C++'s complexity too easily as simply the price of flexibility and performance, let's review what C++'s complexity looks like in practice. For example, read this: http://simpleprogrammer.com/2012/12/01/why-c-is-not-back/ http://simpleprogrammer.com/2012/12/01/why-c-is-not-back/ Memory stomping bugs; all the ways to initialize a variable of a primitive type; copy constructors; overloaded assignment operators; move semantics; smart pointers; value versus reference semantics; the list goes on. Against the cognitive load imposed by complete control over memory management, and lack of verifiable memory safety, JavaScript's warts seem quite minor to me. I imagine that many programmers who work in "managed" languages would agree.