If you like Python you should really look at CoffeeScript and even better ToffeeScript. You can write code that looks a lot like Python. Actually the spirit of Python is to be close to pseudo code, and if you want to you can write CoffeeScript/ToffeeScript that beats Python in that respect.
As an experienced backend developer and newbie at JS, I tried Coffeescript. JavaScript itself has lots of WTF stuff, but CoffeeScript makes it a nightmare with lots of implicit rules and assumptions about things you know. I assume it makes sense for an experienced JS developer, but as a newbie, it didn't help at all.
I really like CoffeeScript, but I don't think it's really closer to pseudocode than Python. Python, for example, eschews anonymous functions in favor of forcing you to name things. It also tries to avoid terse symbols for language features in favor of verbosity. To me, CoffeeScript syntax is somewhere between Python and Ruby.
ToffeeScript makes callbacks go away. Its very nice. Far as I can tell not popular yet but makes code much more readable and writable so I take advantage of it.
I do find the number of options hard to choose from. The hacker approach seems to be to learn a bit of everything (and enjoy it) but for people like me where programming is a necessary tool to get shit done, trying to decide between these 10 options and pick one that will turn out to be the best/still be useful in 3 years is hard.
Did i say that? I just prefer pure javascript the way its meant to be for reasons of consistence with coworkers, documentation and reading other peoples code.
That and i simply dont find JS to be all that bad.
