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It's quite a gift for embedded systems. It's very convenient to have a self-contained solution for a web interface, rather than drag an interpreter and a web server on an already crowded rootfs. Plus, you can get the benefit of static analysis and the like, which is extra useful on such systems.

I believe there are relatively many AOT-compiled-to-native-code languages other than C.

But have they equal tooling? That's why I'd be using C if I were using C for something; it's "portable assembly".

"Why server-side development in Javascript? Seems like a headache."

People like to use what they like.

Same reason people write things in Var'aq :

http://www.reocities.com/connorbd/varaq/index.html

The more "close to the metal" you can get and more awkward and painful it is to program in, the more cred you get. Actual ramifications of slow connections, long polling etc... be damned.

Come to think of it, how come we don't have a web server in Var'aq?