Oh right, thanks for pointing this out :)
In this case, I'd still contradict OP, arguing the same as stevebmark did in a sibling comment: "[...] these syntax details are well thought out, practical, and improve the readability and writability of the language [...]. None of them seen "unnecessary" and teams I've worked on echo this experience."
You probably got it wrong. When he says "difficult to parse", he means for the programmers using JS -- not for people working on JS parsers.
Besides compiler construction, "parse" is also commonly used to mean "read/understand" some new code.