I suspect Mr. Resig is familiar with the potential gotchas, and maybe even has his reasons for still believing it's still worthwhile.
For my own part, as someone who regularly taught high school seniors (and other non-programmers) various programming languages (Pascal, Perl, Prolog, JavaScript, and Java) over a good chunk of the 1990s, I have to say that JavaScript worked out pretty well, possibly even the best of the bunch depending on what your goals were.
Prolog had some real strengths. The combination of accessibility for some simple applications with the power and conceptual depth of the logic paradigm tended to put more or less smart people with no previous experience on the same footing with those with some experience.
But JavaScript seemed to be the best of the bunch in terms of balancing accessibility, speed from which students could get to doing something with everyday practical use, and available depth.
And despite the fact that those of us who were teaching were just learning and coming to grips with some of the "bad parts" ourselves (because how many people really knew JavaScript in the 1990s, right?), everybody got stuff done anyway.
I'm a little down on things like Logo and Karel, partly because I prefer things that are more general, and partly because even in the niche I might use them, my judgment is that Scratch is better. :)
I didn't try Python myself until late 2001, and by then, I was already more or less out of education, so I didn't get to try it out on anybody else.
But if I were guessing, I think the language itself would probably work pretty well for most students, possibly somewhat better than JS. Not sure how big the advantage would be, though (like I said, we really didn't struggle with JS's warts much), and I think the broad target for JavaScript's use give it something of an advantage too.
This would vary by domain, though. If I were trying to teach a number-crunching focused class, for example, Python would probably move way up my list.
For my own part, as someone who regularly taught high school seniors (and other non-programmers) various programming languages (Pascal, Perl, Prolog, JavaScript, and Java) over a good chunk of the 1990s, I have to say that JavaScript worked out pretty well, possibly even the best of the bunch depending on what your goals were.
Prolog had some real strengths. The combination of accessibility for some simple applications with the power and conceptual depth of the logic paradigm tended to put more or less smart people with no previous experience on the same footing with those with some experience.
But JavaScript seemed to be the best of the bunch in terms of balancing accessibility, speed from which students could get to doing something with everyday practical use, and available depth.
And despite the fact that those of us who were teaching were just learning and coming to grips with some of the "bad parts" ourselves (because how many people really knew JavaScript in the 1990s, right?), everybody got stuff done anyway.