Interesting concept but weird choice of language. Yes, JS is popular, but that's because it's the only language supported universally by all browsers. And now people are moving away from it (CoffeeScript, Dart, etc), this project embraces JS. Or maybe JS is now the new JVM?
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Javascript appears to be a language that everyone knows or has used at some point of time. It is ubiquitous because of the web. As opposed to Lua, Scheme, Scala, Python, etc., this will expose it to all programmers.
It is one of the best languages for scripting and event based management of objects.
Also as LLVM is maturing, it will be easy to build a layer on top of it for most popular languages - if at all needed - though that need would only be for comfort and previous exposure to that language than anything else.
May be that is why Javascript was chosen.
Is JavaScript so bad that someone shouldn't create a platform that uses it? Just because someone makes an alternative to JavaScript doesn't mean everyone is moving away from it.
JavaScript isn't the new JVM, it is more likely that V8 fills that role. Node.js which is built on top of V8 and uses JavaScript has robust support for multiple platforms and a robust module system built in. It makes sense to use it as a foundation for a device programming platform.