I could see how that's a legitimate concern, it reminds me of some of the complaints I hear about C++ having too many features (I don't use C++, so this is just hearsay). But Javascript is still a much smaller and simpler language than almost anything else out there. Sure, it has some semantic quirks, but the syntax is fundamentally minimal. I think it will be a long time yet before we reach the point of being really overcomplicated.

I think the uncertainty around Javascript (and I do agree that there seems to be a real sense of confusion in the community when you look at the explosion of libraries and frameworks) is more related to the fact that we are trying to solve hard problems in a language that really gives us no help. We get no type checking, no good concurrency APIs, no immutability, no good sequence abstractions until iterators, just a fairly low-level and extremely hackable language with an unusual prototypal inheritance system.

Well, who knows. I would personally like to see some more stuff be standardized in the language or the official APIs so we don't end up with four competing libraries implementing "map" and "reduce", or promises, or whatever other thing.

So interesting thought here...but C# might be a better comparison. This is a language that has seen a lot of change and a lot of added features. But at least some of the earlier features that were part of the language are no longer used much. I think js is more like C# than C++ in this way.

JavaScript has always been a language people were uncertain how to use.

The only difference with ES6+ is that the uncertainty will come from the addition of features people have complained were missing, instead of the traditional uncertainty that came from the intersection of its flexibility and dev's desire not to learn it.

No, in fact the real problem has been that too many incompetent people were far too certain about how to use it.

The selling point of JavaScript to me, 12 years ago, was "You don't need to know JavaScript to use JavaScript" and most of the people I saw using it were uncertain of how to actually use it (most of those people also being 13-17 in the crowd of web-design forums I hung around with).

I feel that hasn't changed over the years outside of more and more people not knowing how to use JavaScript (and more and more people who actually know their script).

You are the only person who is really uncertain on it.