It's not useful, interesting, or accurate to stratify people this way. You have no idea what someone's intelligence level or background is based on their usage of JS or C.

I loathe JS, but one of the best devs I know likes it. People's mileage varies.

For me personally, there's much more money in easy React products than making games. I'm not a great dev, but I'd be doing this same work even if I were.

I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic here.

Actually VHDL / Verilog programmers are on top of the food chain.

I don't know much about VHDL, but there seems to be a non-scientifically-measured negative correlation between the quality of candidates I've interviewed claiming VHDL experience vs. those without.

And is that reflected by their compensation, or ... ?

They will eat you.

The “food chain?” What do you mean by that?