I don't think that comment requires more substantiation than yours that there are "low enough standards that newbies feel empowered without learning anything new". The more people that learn your language, the more likely it is that you will find some that can contribute to its state-of-the-art. A low bar doesn't effect people that would surpass a higher bar with ease: they still wish to learn and sate their natural curiosities.

In fact, the normal stereotype of JavaScript developers as people constantly chasing new technologies and libraries is actually true, but what you are claiming is the exact opposite: "people feeling empowered without learning anything new". People are empowered and learning new things because there is a low barrier to doing so and this is exciting.

  > misses most of the expressiveness of Python and Ruby.
  > It's more on line with Java

Have you actually written modern JavaScript code? I personally think it's more expressive than both Python and Ruby, and certainly much more so than Java.

  > Overall, the reason Javascript still exists and is
  > viewed as a serious language is all because it has a
  > monopoly on the browsers.

As it stands JavaScript doesn't have a monopoly on the browser. You can transpile ClojureScript, Elm, Reason, PureScript and many other languages to it. Yet -- surprise! It is still in use. Do you honestly think this is just inertia? I'd argue that it's investment in the platform itself and particularly 'innovation in maneuverability' (number of environments, speed of prototyping, backward compatible code, ease of hiring) which keeps developers using the platform.

In my opinion, the existence of NPM and a broad range of environments that you can run your code on will likely mean that JavaScript would still be a productive environment even if the web was to die.