On the other hand, true criticisms of Javascript, the language, are boring. Yeah, there are problems. You learn to deal with those problems. They aren't really that horrible. I worked with a lot of less convenient languages than JS (especially ES6, which is actually not bad). The standard library is pretty bad, but the language itself is easy enough to use that it's pretty trivial to implement what you need yourself. There are also a few pretty well written third party libraries with no other dependencies which you can use. The build environment is horrible, but not really any more horrible than some other environments I've had to deal with.
No, the real problem is that a lot of Javascript developers choose to stick hot pokers in their eyes. They don't read the code of their dependencies. They don't care how many ridiculous dependencies of dependencies they use. They refuse (absolutely refuse, to the point of calling you an imbecile if you even suggest it) to write their own tools. They choose the build tools that are the most wonky and are built on the most insane internal code -- because they don't care to ever look at that code. They look at the "box features" and say, "Oh, everyone is using that and it has all the features we want. You are crazy if you want that stupid boring thing that barely does anything (and yet works)". They don't do any planning for configuration management. They don't think about how they want to upgrade their dependencies, and especially don't dare think about inspecting the code in the dependencies. "Latest is best! If it breaks, we'll deal with it then".
Javascript is not really that bad. It really is that the community does not have a particularly good grasp on how to minimise risk in large projects. On the other hand, it's a common refrain on other platforms. While Javascript is not really that bad, other platforms are considerably better and you can get away with really poor practices for a lot longer. Not that they won't absolutely kick your ass eventually -- it's just going to be a couple of years away when you have moved to another company at a higher pay scale.
Yeah, I think you're hitting the nail on the head here. I'd go so far as to say that the language itself is actually better than C (in the sense that it's more intuitive and less error-prone). C has the excuse of age. But the C community has a culture of carefully designing architectures to minimize pain points and bugs, and avoid other pitfalls--and that was true 20 years ago when I started programming and C was a lot closer to as old as JS is now.
As I've said elsewhere, you can write good code in bad ecosystems, and some people are doing amazing things in JS.
No, the real problem is that a lot of Javascript developers choose to stick hot pokers in their eyes. They don't read the code of their dependencies. They don't care how many ridiculous dependencies of dependencies they use. They refuse (absolutely refuse, to the point of calling you an imbecile if you even suggest it) to write their own tools. They choose the build tools that are the most wonky and are built on the most insane internal code -- because they don't care to ever look at that code. They look at the "box features" and say, "Oh, everyone is using that and it has all the features we want. You are crazy if you want that stupid boring thing that barely does anything (and yet works)". They don't do any planning for configuration management. They don't think about how they want to upgrade their dependencies, and especially don't dare think about inspecting the code in the dependencies. "Latest is best! If it breaks, we'll deal with it then".
Javascript is not really that bad. It really is that the community does not have a particularly good grasp on how to minimise risk in large projects. On the other hand, it's a common refrain on other platforms. While Javascript is not really that bad, other platforms are considerably better and you can get away with really poor practices for a lot longer. Not that they won't absolutely kick your ass eventually -- it's just going to be a couple of years away when you have moved to another company at a higher pay scale.