I can't emphasize how much I disagree with you. You can do an incredible amount with Javascript with very few symbols to learn up front. If your goal is to get people interested in programming, there is nothing more discouraging than having to trudge through learning the intricacies of a relatively "safe" language with rigid types, inheritance models, and dozens of enigmatic exceptions.
Notice that I'm not saying these things are bad, but they are certainly more than a beginner needs to learn basic syntax and become familiar with control flow.
I don't think you disagree with me at all... I said that javascript feels strange to me because I didn't start with it. I think it's a fine language to start people on, just an uncommon one that should yield interesting results.
I certainly wouldn't suggest teaching with more "rigid" languages. I was trained on Java, and looking back I can see what a terrible way of doing things that is.
FWIW though, it's been my experience that for all but the most trivial tasks in Javascript, you quickly find yourself getting into somewhat advanced territory with e.g. scoping, closures, and anonymous functions. Again, I think these concepts are mostly weird to me just because they're different than what I personally was trained on, but they're certainly not as easy to grok as e.g. variable assignment and conditionals.
You know, my mistake -- I somehow just skipped over the last line of your paragraph ("it's scary to me...").
In that way, I certainly see what you're saying. It'll be interesting to see what new problems emerge if this continues as a paradigm for teaching how to program.
Likewise the emphasis! Although you're right that a lot of languages are bureaucratic with enigmatic exceptions and so on, I think that a well-typed language is better to learn to begin with than one which basically accepts whatever nonsense you throw at it. I'm not sure the perfect beginner's language exists, but I personally believe that if it did it would be statically typed.
Strongly typed languages aren't good introductory languages, but that doesn't mean any language that isn't strongly types is a good introductory language.
Notice that I'm not saying these things are bad, but they are certainly more than a beginner needs to learn basic syntax and become familiar with control flow.