Try to be more charitable by seeing it from their point of view. Imagine being used to a language that helps you be rapidly productive and shields you from a huge catalog of mistakes. But one day you're forced to use JavaScript, and suddenly you've got nothing. It'd be like driving in a doorless jeep with no seatbelts on a high rise highway with no guard rails. Sure you can do what you want, and even in some nice, clever ways. But there are so many ways to hurt yourself, and no natural protections to prevent it.

To put it another way, it's like throwing a frontend developer into the world of C. Suddenly you have to be aware of and correctly manage your memory explicitly, whereas before you were safely protected from having to think about it.

Lastly, not everyone can voice their opinions so well. Communication is a difficult thing, and understanding what you're trying to communicate more so. If someone says they hate something, it's not always baseless. Instead of jumping to name-calling, have more patience in trying to understand why.

this is a good characterization of what causes people confusion, and i think the parallel with people going to c from js is totally right. i experienced that myself. its a great way to put it and i will probably use it, thanks!

the second point about being more understanding surely applies more to the person proudly hating a language with no constructive support about why, and little evidence of an effort to overcome the language's obstacles. sure, i dont know everything about this person, but i take the comment at face value, which seems to be the norm. maybe calling them out on it isnt helpful? i dont know, but it didn't seem that bad.

If the hate were towards a person, I would completely agree with you. But OP is only hating JavaScript-the-tool, so I have no contempt towards his opinion.

In contrast, if OP were hating on JavaScript programmers, then your indignation would be completely justified. But he's not, and I admit to holding a similar position: I hate C++ and prefer to never lay eyes on it again, but I have nothing against C++ programmers :) The difference between C++ and JS is C++ is less forced upon someone's career as the only language to work with.

thats a good distinction, and i suppose its defensible. but imagine you are a trumpet player, and a pianist walks by and says "i hate that non-instrument trumpet" unprovoked. no one is wrong to hate the trumpet. but saying it to a trumpet player, and then saying they aren't even a musician (implied by "non-language"), is going to catch heat.

and its undeniably true that javascript has got loads of warts. i mean, look no further than "javascript: the good parts" as perhaps the most recommended book. (i guess you already know this, but for the maybe 1 other person reading this...) but despite that, i enjoy the hell out of writing good js, and love that people can use what you make by going to web page. and w/r/t the warts, i feel that if they were corrected, my js life woulnd't change much at all. so when people point to the warts as evidence that its a bad language, all i can say is that while they are obviously bad, they dont end up mattering to me. thats clearly not true of everyone, but id bet its true alot. because of this, i find it pretty easy to spot people who are excited to hate js because they are pretty sure its a safe thing to hate and it will make them look in the know. i mean, i was guilty of this when i was younger with mysql and php.

and yes, people being "forced" to use js is surely contributing to the hate, probably the same way people hate having to use css. they look at them as afterthoughts, but its funny because in a lot of cases, its like the main thing that needs work. i just wonder why people cling to the idea that "real programming" has a certain look, when being good at js and css is super helpful and important to good web projects.

i suppose we are arguing for the same thing- basically open-mindedness and willingness to learn.

Two days after you two posted this thread of comments, and I must thank you for it.

The analogy of musical instruments may be appropriate here; I feel that my ability or failure to be productive with a particular set of tools to be an aspect of my identity.

Set me to debugging a C++ or Java class library and I can get to work, but these may not be the tools I would prefer to start with.

Am I a bad programmer? Hmm. Identity can be a fragile thing.