I've been coding for over 20 years, and HTML was one of the first "languages" that I picked up, because it was cool to create websites in the infancy of the Internet.

When it came to writing more complex stuff, I gravitated towards IE, ActiveX, and VBScript. I hated JavaScript. I was also 10 years old, so my criteria for picking a language was a bit less nuanced.

Obviously, JavaScript became the programming language of the web, and I had to learn it. I hated the inane syntax, and the fact that I was always forced to use jQuery for dealing with browser differences. I tolerated JavaScript, but still hated it.

With React, Babel, and ES6, that's all changed. I've been writing a lot of ES6 code over the last year, and it's been an absolute joy to use. Everything the author writes about is what I've learned to love.

Perhaps I've become more mature. But I'd like to think JavaScript has too.