[hansvm]

(also just me talking -- here are some potential counterpoints)

The choice of language often matters a lot less than how familiar you are with it (and its ecosystem(s)). I think it's totally reasonable to want to use JS for a compiler in, e.g., a Node project if for no other reason than to not have to learn too many extra things at once to be productive with the new tool.

I also don't think it's fair to assume everything will be parsed, tokenized, etc server-side. Even assuming that data originates server-side (since if it didn't you very well might have a compelling case for handling it client-side if for no other reason than latency), it's moderately popular nowadays to serve a basically static site describing a bunch of dynamic things for the frontend to do. Doing so can make it easier/cheaper to hit any given SLA at the cost of making your site unusable for underpowered clients and pushing those costs to your users, and that tradeoff isn't suitable everywhere, but it does exist.

It's interesting that you seem to implicitly assume the only reason somebody would choose JS is that they're writing frontend code. It's personally not my first choice for most things, but it's not too hard to imagine that some aspect of JS (e.g., npm) might make it a top contender for a particular project despite its other flaws and tradeoffs.

[tenaciousDaniel]

This makes me feel really good. I’m working on my first DSL and I’m writing it in JS. I really don’t know what I’m doing, and it felt like JS wasn’t as good a choice as a more “serious” language like C++.

But I’m standing my ground because I’m not even writing a proper “compiler” - in my case, the output is JSON. So it just kinda feels like it makes sense to stick with JS.

[BeKindAndLearn]

Write software, grow from your experience and - sometimes - mistakes. Worrying and getting caught in analysis paralysis is the best way to stagnate.

Tons of brilliant people and huge companies have made software in X and found out it would have been better in Y. There's always tomorrow, as long as you learned today.