The syntax is often terrible (how it handles escape characters, for instance) but there's usually a well-meaning backwards compatibility reason for that. It's also flawed in many many other ways (classes, package management, variable scoping just to name a few).

But god damn if I can't bash (no pun intended, har har) out code to do most things very quickly in it. It's a fantastically accessible language, and it's a lot more powerful than it gets credit for.