I can't believe I'm having to stick up for javascript... I don't particularly like it myself, and I think the growth of node.js oven the past few years is one of the biggest jokes in our industry... But that said, every language has its surprises when it comes to coercion/equality/etc. When you move from Java to Ruby you get burned by the differences and when you move from just about anything else to javascript you suffer as well.

You as a programmer just have to know the differences between these languages and work appropriately.

Again... I can't believe I'm sticking up for javascript. I prefer strongly typed languages that can have projects with several dozens to hundreds of developers.

But I can see the appeal for javascript and other prototype inheritance languages. My first two languages were Dylan and Newtonscript.