Was there that much hating on Crockford? Most of the posts I saw were in support of his position, if not his (probably justified) grouchy attitude.

I find it hard to disagree with him. Eichs has admitted ASI was a mistake, every half-decent JS tutorial states unequivocally "use semicolons"... if you don't want semi-colons, don't use JS.

I find semicolon hilarious. We need to lighten up!