If you will have to explain to a layman what JS is, what all will you explain?

JS is a scripting language for web browsers that improves how a user interacts with a website.

The scripting language is rudimentary at best and functionally unmaintainable after six months of moderate development.

If you're planning on using JS in a project, you're better off stabbing yourself in the hands and knees with a sharp fork than trying to build anything of any true value with it.

JS is like astrology. There are too many people that use it and think that it is good for them and claim that it is real science. Millions of people can’t be wrong, right?

Javascript is freedom of expression. It went from being the hated single option of the browser to conquering parts of the server market. It is not type-restricted and it is concise. Or, it is type-unsafe and not sufficiently explicit. Programmer discipline is essential as it is not embedded in the language. It can be liberating or dangerous like off-track <insert sport>.

@Lensflare I wish I could ++ this more than once!

@webketje I chose to insert sailing. Nothing better than "off-track sailing".

Something that I use that pays my bills.

It's like Cthulhu, but worse and for computers.

@sariel with a dull spoon not a fork, but you have to force it in. The pain starts slowly but the more experience you have, the more you want to shove that dull spoon.

@KDSBest you have inspired me for a different analogy 😄

JS is like a thin plastic spoon with a hole: No matter what you want to use it for, it does a shitty job. And why would anybody make a spoon with a hole? Exactly. It doesn’t make sense.

I've explained to my children that programming languages are basically magic words. You write a loooong spell and then enchant it into doing something.

This one time my kids spent like 10 minutes watching me work until declaring that "wizards are lame!" and stomping away. (It does help that I keep a magic-wand looking stick on my desk, to scratch my back).

If I tried to describe JavaScript for them, I would say it's a spell appropriate to make a magical portrait of a princess that has a pimple in her forehead. You want to make the pimple disappear in the portrait, but if you write a single misplaced magic word, your actual princess turns into a frog.