So much negativity in this thread & on HN in general. Not everyone has hardware experience, and this looks great for newcomers.
Successfully-executed abstraction is a wonderful thing, people have been trying to abstract away (but retain performance) of C for decades. I welcome newcomers, maybe someone will get it right
I just replied to someone who was saying "what's the point, a BeagleBone Black is so much more powerful".
(sigh)
I'm aghast that a CS education wouldn't include at least Java, especially considering that a large number of schools switched exclusively to Java at one point.
As to your point to zhemao about learning new things, I said in my original post that I wanted to learn new things, in this case, hardware.
For some, there's no joy in complexity or inspiration in learning. Just wrong or right--generally with "my way" being right. What a shame!
Seems like a lot of that energy would be better spent making an equivalent device that runs <language of preference>. Want it to run coffeescript? go make a product designed around coffeescript. Want it to run Lua? Go make a product designed around Lua. etc.
The market has room for diversity. Just because it's not the diversity you prefer, doesn't make it any less valid.
Once you've got to that level you've got a whole family of related microcontrollers that you can move onto from the same principles. With this javascript device you've got no such thing. You're stuck in a dead end if/when it turns out not to have what you need, as you can't progress to "the next level".
I also see nothing on the site to suggest that C/C++ (at least) couldn't be supported, although I have no clue how much work you would have to do yourself (likely too much).