>>9
I am a Javascript expert, and I have done a lot of enterprise projects in the language and will try to recall specifically why it is better than Python. I will contrast all of the points you have raised:
- Sane scoping: Javascript does not magically create local variables behind your back. They are declared explicitly so you know exactly what their scope is, and you are assured you are not accidentally trashing another variable with the same name.
- Battle-tested syntax: Javascript continues the tradition of delimiting blocks with curly braces, ensuring your code is never ambiguous. The best programmers stand by this syntax as the most optimal and easy to understand system in use. The most successful languages owe everything to this style of syntax. Python programmers instead have to suffer when their whitespace-sensitive code is destroyed due to tooling errors, and cannot be reformatted automatically.
- Exceptional support for functional programming: Javascript supports everything that makes a functional language functional. There is a reason why it's often called a Scheme dialect. Unheard of support for functional paradigms and closures in what is superficially an imperative language. Javascript leads the race in this field, exemplified by frameworks such as node.js which show the true power of functional programming only available in Javascript. Anonymous functions are fully supported unlike the pitiful lambdas that Python provides.
- Javascript is completely orthogonal: as mentioned earlier, its reliance on functional programming gives innovative capabilities to objects. Objects form the basis of practically everything in a way that is truly innovative. Objects, being very powerful dictionaries, have unparalleled descriptive power in Javascript and represent everything from data records to complex class systems. Python does not even come close to this kind of expressiveness, with its crippled dictionaries.
- Blazing performance: Javascript is by far the fastest dynamic language ever. It tops the charts at the CLBG, completely destroying Python and making claimed-to-be-fast languages like Lua and Go look like total jokes to the programming community. There's a reason why web browsers continue to use Javascript instead of settling for inferiority. Emerging projects like asm.js show just what a competently-designed dynamic language is capable of. You don't see that kind of awesomeness from any of those other toys. Did I mention just how concurrent it is? I'm sure you've heard of AJAX by now, it's years old!
- Javascript needs no API, because there is no reason to use another language. Web browsers are the future and Javascript is the new C. Before long CPUs will run Javascript natively and there will be no point in even implementing other languages on top of it, because they will not compete. People laugh at JSLinux now, but within 5 years it will be their only choice of operating system and they will repent and drool over the possibilities only available with the Javascript platform.
- Javascript drives innovation, with new features such as coroutines and weak maps making their way into the next version. It will be unique in its support for tail-call optimization in a mainstream language. In fact, Javascript is showing how ``pythonic'' (LOL) features can be improved when people who actually know what they are doing, and who respect previous research, get their hands on them.
- Author of Javascript, Brendan Eich, supports strong family values and has backed Prop 8. Do you really want to be seen as an enemy of the traditional family?