I just want to point out the author simultaneously admits that he doesn't know much JavaScript, still uses smalltalk, and advocates for transpilers so I'm going to have to take his opinion with a massive gran of salt.
In fact, it's often people who have experience outside of JavaScript that complain about it. But since JavaScript is the best thing out there, and it's impossible to get used to a bad situation, guess we should ignore anybody with non-JavaScript ideologies. I mean it's just plain unpatriotic towards the web to criticise JavaScript in any way.
Whine, whine whine.
JavaScript is not perfect by any means, but if it was that bad how come so many companies have used it successfully?
Netflix, Ebay, Uber, Facebook, etc. These are not your average mom-and-pop web dev shops.
It is available in every browser on every device. I bet they would rather use flash because of its obfuscation and more intrusive functionality, but it fails the one requirement.