It makes me cringe to hear you say Java to mean JavaScript :D
Python is great but even Hive uses CUSTOM JSON which is native javascript.
Wanna do anything on a website? Need Javascript.
I agree that Python is a better place to start but Javascript is also much more basic and easy to deal with compared to C++ or other similar languages. All scripting languages have increased simplicity. Javascript has a crazy amount of power behind it. At the same time if you learn Python a lot of that knowledge is going to translate to Javascript.
Ah yeah, sorry for that. Java is dead and should have died a lot sooner than it did. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with it anymore with my end users. I stopped supporting it as soon as they announced they were shutting it. If the resource couldn't shift to HTML5 then they needed to find something else.