I think most people who "hate javascript", dislike working with the DOM, is that true for you? I personally think javascript is a pretty simple & beautiful language. It has its warts, but so does ruby, python, and other dynamic languages.
Yes I dislike the DOM. Maybe I it's that JS is TOO simple (or not simple enough?). I find myself having to constantly match brackets and braces. And the browsers provide little help in the area of syntax checking.
Yes, I'm aware of Firebug; it's nice (although it seems to have gotten buggier).
You should try Webkit's debugger (and not chrome's). It's fast and stable. Chrome's debugger is getting there, but is still missing some basic stuff compared to webkit/firebug.
I rarely find syntax a problem though -- javascript syntax is pretty simple. You could probably write a javascript parser in one day, but it would probably take you a month to write a ruby parser.
