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Alternative takeaway: Javascript is so widely deployed that most languages have found a way to compile to it

Alternativev (joke) takeaway: Javascript is as important to computers as machine code

Alternative non-joke: JavaScript is important to the web, just like machine code is important to computers. Actually, many believed JavaScript was the assembly of the web (just attempt to read the minimized scripts running in your browser), until WebAssembly...

* https://www.hanselman.com/blog/JavaScriptIsAssemblyLanguageF...

I think the quality of JavaScript as a language is completely irrelevant. It is because it's the only* language that runs in web browsers. So if you want your stuff to run there, you have to target JavaScript.

If WATFIV was the only language that ran in browsers, everything would target it, too.

Nah. It's just that different people have different tastes. Don't compare JavaScript alternatives to people wanting an alternative to Java bytecode; compare JavaScript alternatives to people wanting an alternative to Java.

It's just that, at least for the first couple decades of its existence, the platform in question had no bytecode, so transpiling was the only way to escape.