>> This is probably the reason for Javascript's popularity, but if you ignore some bad language design, Javascript is a very simple language with a very small n

>> This is probably the reason for Javascript's popularity, but if you ignore some bad language design, Javascript is a very simple language with a very small number of concepts that you need to understand to start getting work done in it I hear this a lot. JavaScript is great unless you [insert example why JavaScript isn't great]. You could easily turn that statement around: JavaScript sucks, unless you don't [insert example why JavaScript sucks]. It's an empty statement that could apply to almost any development language no matter how objectively 'good' or 'bad' it is. I don't know Scala, but judging from the (interesting) article it appears that Scala can be perceived as a bad language because it allows you to write obfuscated, hard to read code that hides many details of what's going on in the program. This can be both a good and a bad quality, depending on the kind of program, and the kind of developer. Personally I like languages that aren't too opinionated or restrictive, so I might like Scala. Compare this to JavaScript, which is a bad language for the simple fact that it's downright dangerous to program in looking at all the idiotic, arbitrary corner cases you have to avoid. You could have a philosophical discussion about the merits of the design choices in Scala, I don't think you could say the same about JavaScript though, it really is popular only by accident.