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Comment by SiVal | Hacker News Reader

There is a special issue for JavaScript, and that's monopoly. If you want internet service and don't like your ISP, you'll be a lot more critical if you can't realistically switch to a different ISP. If you want the world-changing reach of the web and don't like JavaScript, you may be a lot more critical of it than you are of some server-side language that you don't like either (as long as you get to choose your server-side stack).

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Same applies to any platform.

Using languages that don't come with the platform SDK, or aren't used to build the underlying platform, always add development costs with additional FFI, debugging tools, binding libraries,....

> There is a special issue for JavaScript, and that's monopoly

There are languages that treat javascript as a compilation target. Purescript, Elm, Closurescript, Rescript, Scalajs, etc. So if you really dislike javascript, you are still free to pick something else.

That just hides the lack of choice with another layer of complexity. A script language is not the best compilation target, but Web Assembly probably would be.

> A script language is not the best compilation target

Performance-wise, sure. But the parent commenters were not complaining about performance; they were upset about javascript's syntax, or lack of type guarantees, or typecasting, and so on. Well, all of this can be taken care of by the compiler, if the developer dislikes javascript itself so much.

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