I think you're wrong. JavaScript has a great community with tons of talent. JavaScript is the problem. You don't see nearly the same level of problems in the Python community for example.
The problem here is browsers, not JavaScript. Python has evolved much since the '90s, just like JavaScript has. The problem unique to JavaScript is browsers, and end users running browser versions with a decade span in between them. This is also why the "IE9+" requirement is so relevant to this conversation, because developing with that luxury is entirely different than developing for IE7+ (or, for some poor souls still out there, IE6+).