> And my biggest surprise is how Javascript turned from one of the most hated programming language ( besides PHP ? ) into being acceptable and loved.

I think a primary reason for this is that Javascript first was a language that was easy to hate because mistakes couldn't be fixed - "don't break the web" and all that. The community then found a way to improve it without breaking the web: add improvements with different syntax, and let your editor/build system/whatever use a linter to deprecate the old syntax from your personal codebase. It's greatly improved in that way and now easily holds a candle to other long-term popular languages.