I Googled last week what the simplest programming languages were, and most recommended JavaScript as a first language...
I'm not sure what "simplest" means. I suppose if you're starting with Web design and development, the basics of JavaScript would be sort of a lingua franca, but easiest? And which JavaScript would that be? EcmaScript 5? Or 6 with all the new stuff?
See this article and its caveat about JavaScript:
http://blog.flatironschool.com/should-i-learn-javascript-or-ruby-at-a-coding-bootcamp/
Interesting article. Basically it says you should
learn to learn, not just a language (any).
I started with a scripting language called Lua, you know how untyped languages works: everything is a variable, and you can or not declare it first, and don't know it's type, and you can modify it's type to another later, etc.. just with functions and nothing more. Like old javascript.
In the other hand, typed languages, you design and know each type: like TypeScript does (and you can mix both worlds with it), then compiles to javascript.
And OOP is very limited in javascript: you can't have 'easily' a hidden method in a class, you need to underscore it '_method' is
currently the good practice due to language limits.
But
I think is easier to learn like any scripting language. But you can't live only with that, you need to master OOP also, in the article compared to Ruby (that I never touched more than an online school and never used it).
But I can compare it to Pascal. JavaScript is easier because it has less features, or handy features like everything is like a "variant object" to my eyes. Of course it has it counterparts, you still need to parseFloat, parseInt and .toString() if you need it, like in pascal StrToFloat, StrToInt, IntToStr, and the like.
I did nothing with Node yet, so I can't compare it to pascal in the system level.
BTW javascript is more popular and widely used than pascal, not just for web, for servers, for games (Unity). It doesn't come that you need to learn pascal or javascript, I agree with the article that you must master anything you need to work with.
I don't see anyone using pascal for making a wii u game, or a ps4 game, but yes javascript because it's available to make it. it's availability a good point also.
It's my point of view, I agree with some parts of the article but I added my own view.
Pascal for me was harder to learn that javascript.