Well, ES6 wasn't available "the past 10 years or so", whereas it will be next year, and recent 6-to-5 transpilers make it a backwards compatible option too.
>ES6 might actually be ok, in the sense of "about as good as Python 2.3".
Well, it's more ubiquitus that Python, more dynamic, more modern (if you include ES6 features), tied to a more powerful environment (the web), and beats the shit out of Python regarding execution speed.
None of these things are features of the language itself (except arguably "more modern", whatever that means). They're all byproducts of the fact that JS is the only language that runs in a browser. JavaScript has basically succeeded dramatically in spite of itself by piggybacking on the runaway success of the web/browsers.
So? The end result is the same, Javascript has these attributes and Python doesn't.
- builtin type literal
- closures and fp idioms
- generators
- asynchrony
- comprehensions
IOW, JavaScript is going to be great next year. Just like it was going to have been each year for the past 10 years or so.
ES6 might actually be ok, in the sense of "about as good as Python 2.3".