He's done the work, so he has more right to complain than most:
* https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/javascript-the-good/978...
This.
I suspect there is a certain way those who rave about TS like yourself write and structure their code (all code, regardless of language) in a way that naturally lends itself to strict typing. The "rigorous null checking" comment struck me as odd, as someone who has written JS for almost 20 years, I've just never had to think about, or use null values. I probably just use the good parts of the language and avoid the bad [2]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23913294
[2] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/javascript-the-good/978...
[Javascript: The Good Parts](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do) -- Once something makes it into Javascript, it's there forever. While this book only covers up to ES5, it creates a good foundation for things to use and things to avoid. This is especially relevant if you wind up working with older codebases.
[Exploring ES6](https://exploringjs.com/es6/) -- This book will take you from the ES5 land into the world of ES6 (ES 2015). It does NOT cover newer features from ES2016-ES2019, but only a couple of those are major updates.
[Javascript Allonge](https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read) -- A nice, soft introduction to functional JS concepts.
[You don't know JS](https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/READM...) -- an overview of the language feature by feature. I feel it's a bit too advanced for an introduction on quite a few things though.
I'd avoid Javascript: The Definitive Guide. It doesn't do a great job of distinguishing between the good and bad parts of the language and some examples aren't best practice anymore. Maybe they'll get around to creating a 7th edition one day that'll be worth reading. Likewise, I'd avoid reading the spec until you've worked with the language for a while. It's not light reading. I'd start with the 5.1 edition because it's much easier to approach (and much smaller at only around 250 pages). Once you've read that, it'll make reading the newer specs much easier (ES2019 spec is over 3x as long).
^ Speaks directly to your viewpoint.
[0]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/javascript-the-good/978...
[1]: https://www.jslint.com/
I'm working on a book called "How to not get your knickers in a twist because you neglected to learn from people who came before you."