I'm also no (good) JS programmer. I use it when I have to. For mundane things.
That's not really an adequate situation to be in if you're a web developer these days. Especially if it means you need to use things like <cflayout> etc to do your work for you. You might have been able to get away with not knowing JS ten years ago, but not now. I recommend you do the courses here: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript and here: http://www.codeschool.com/paths/javascript.
What do you mean by "mark-up"?
htMl
they do make it easy with cflayout, yet I have also found so many annoying things it does! Like you cannot put a JS function call within one; has to be outside it or in another template. Yuck.
Precisely. Which is why you should get yourself skilled-up sufficiently to not need them.
Transferable skills?
Well put it this way: being adept at <cflayout> is not going to help you get your next job, even if it's a CF one (indeed you daren't mention it, IMO). However JS is pretty much an essential skill to have in the web market these days. You don't need to be a guru, but you need to be confident with it.
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Adam