You're doubting that Javascript is a popular language for people pushing the forefront of software development? I'd cite for you a ton of the work being done on node, ember, knockout, backbone, jquery, even some embeddable hardware thing I read about on here the other day. There's a huge amount of energy in that area, lots of extremely smart people.
Or are you just being snobbish about javascript? It's a pretty solid language, and has interpreters installed on virtually every computer on earth with built-in distribution.
My friend, JS has a virtual monopoly on what it does. If there are other client-side browser languages, i have not heard of them.
>It has built-in interpreters (read "Browsers") on every computer.
JS is pretty slow (It uses an interpreter!). The notion of using it on the backend is debatable. "A lot of people are putting a lot of effort in to it" isn't a valid argument. u said it yourself: "people are told to/forced to use it"
As for the hardware thing, didn't you read the HN discussion about that? no body thinks that's a good idea. It just a way to let web devs do something on the hardware without bothering to learn an actual low level language.
>> JS is pretty slow (It uses an interpreter!) The notion of using it on the backend is debatable.
It is pretty fast. It has a world class VM with an optimising JIT compiler. V8 is considerably faster than many other interpreted language, Ruby, Python etc. It's being used on the backend by many smart companies.
>> As for the hardware thing [...] It just a way to let web devs do something on the hardware without bothering to learn an actual low level language.
I know C. I use it when necessary but I'd rather write JS. Apparently so would plenty of other people. It's not about laziness.
"It's a pretty solid language" - can you remind me what should I use "==" or "===" and why should I care? More here: http://wtfjs.com
"has interpreters installed on virtually every computer on earth with built-in distribution" - which means we are stuck with it, thanks very much for "open" web.
JS is, in general, a relatively poorly designed language which is forced upon us (thankfully, not me). Given the choice people would jump ship in a heartbeat.
Or are you just being snobbish about javascript? It's a pretty solid language, and has interpreters installed on virtually every computer on earth with built-in distribution.