[harshreality]

The nginx config language already is a half-assed DSL with all sorts of unintuitive limitations (chiefly caused by its insane mix of declarative and procedural elements, and arbitrary precedence of declarative directives). The last thing nginx needs is a new DSL (that everyone has to learn from scratch) with a new set of unintuitive limitations and a new set of differences from common general purpose languages.

There are plenty of good minimal languages, from embedded scheme varieties to luajit to io. If that's what you mean by a DSL (embedded minimalist scheme with some nginx-specific functions and variables, for instance) then I agree, but they chose the javascript path for a good reason: it has a healthy community and ecosystem, and while the performance won't be top notch, I don't think it'll matter.