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).