It’s only used by many because it’s the only scripting language on the web browser, and not due to anything intrinsic to the language.

So it’s popularity tells us nothing about the language, and more about the fact that it’s the only language on the most popular platform.

So I’m not sure comparing any language to JS is useful to learn about the language.

It's less useful when you realize that almost every other widely used programming language is better than JavaScript.