> The fact that it's more difficult setting up a JS project than it is for, say, Scala which is itself a pain in the ass speaks volumes.

JS allows various levels of complexity. From inlining JS inside script tags in an html file or requiring a js file in the script tag to transpiling cutting-edge JS (or dialects/supersets of JS) with sourcemaps, minification, code-splitting, etc.

The latter end of the spectrum is reasonably complex; the former is ridiculously simple. I wonder if same can be said about Scala.