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> JavaScript has a bad reputation, but in reality is a good language for what is was designed for: quickly write small scripts.

That's a little condescending, considering the amount of non-trivial, critical applications written in JavaScript. And it ignores the progress made on the language and tooling of the last oh i don't know, 20 years.

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Non-trivial, sure. Critical? In what sense?

Critical for the survival of many businesses? Dealing with important data and processes? In that sense. Not in a system-critical kind of sense (kernels, etc).

I mean I'm glad that when I call 911 the dispatching system probably isn't written in JavaScript, but it's likely that there's a web ui somewhere in there. Police cars too, run web applications on those touchscreens.

I'm definitely aware of JS shortcomings, having had to deal with them for many years. I just found that particular quote to be a little snarky, and outdated.

Node.js uses javascript as its default language interface, and considering it is software intended for server-side, with a userbase ranging from Microsoft, IBM, Netflix, Yahoo and Paypal (to name a few) in production environments, I would assert without doubt that it is in fact critical.

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