There's lots of different potential approaches and contexts for teaching beginners.

For low-contact teaching where the students were going to be doing lots of independent work between contacts, that was more concerned with enabling students to try stuff out, I'd generally agree with this.

For other contexts, maybe not; I think Python (or Scheme, or some others) a better choice for a first language in a broad, structured CS curriculum. Though I'd certainly still agree JS is a useful thing to have in your toolkit fairly early on in programming these days.