Worth considering that a beginner can learn JS by opening the dev tools in their browser; or by writing an html file and opening that in their browser. Beginners get tripped up a lot by setting up development runtimes/environments, but JS sidesteps that thanks to its sheer ubiquity. It's a bit like the low bar for PHP back in the day - people just renamed their .html files .php and boom, programming language.
Those who detest JS and PHP are twitching right now, but no matter the (de)merits of the languages getting started with them was INCREDIBLY easy. If you think barrier to entry doesn't make a difference, it's been too long since you had a junior ;)
Doesn't mean the actual language is easier to learn, although it probably is. JS has been the first language of countless web devs who learned it without a CS degree. Do they miss some of the disciplines of CS? Sure. Did that stop them shipping something? No. Would they be "better programmers" if they'd started with something else? Perhaps, but not guaranteed.