There are many people who will tell you that JavaScript is an awful language. I’m one of them. It has lots of weird quirks that you have to remember to work around, or that encourage you to write buggy code. And when you’re already struggling to learn the new ways of thinking that go with programming, I think it’s a serious crime to make your life even, say, 20% more difficult than it needs to be.

But that doesn’t really matter to you. The important thing about JavaScript is that it runs everywhere. You don’t have to install anything to start writing code with it. Your friends don’t have to install anything to try out your work.

And if it’s a little like driving an old car where you have to jiggle the steering wheel to get the key to turn in the ignition, and remember to turn off the left-hand turn signal manually because it doesn’t turn itself off, and remember that it pulls to the right when you brake hard, well… there is so much weird stuff to learn in programming that those details won’t be a big deal.

In practice JavaScript is roughly as good as any other programming language. Most of the time it doesn’t really matter what language you use, and the choice is often made for you (e.g. “I want to add cool features to my Twine game” or “my boss told me to use this language” or whatever).