If you ask me this has more to do with JS becoming the lingua franca of web development and less to do with making programming as easy as possible.

Case in point, recently some chick from highschool asked me where she could learn to code, so I pointed her to some Scheme tuts, nothing too complex since she requested something as easy as possible.

....then she writes back asking if "this is what jquery uses". I say "no", she gets upset and ask me "what the hell is this for then?"

Long story short: for a lot of people out there is not about learning how to code but learn-X-to-do-Y no more no less...