My perspective comes from having found Ruby a lot easier as a (mostly) beginner after having mostly just used Flash than I found JavaScript 2 years later when I decided to move to the front-end. Since that time, JavaScript has become considerably more complex as new features have been added and its ecosystem has grown.

IMO learning very beginner-friendly language like Ruby to a low-intermediate level first actually speeds up the process of getting to an employable level with a more difficult language like JS.