I love to see Javascript used for stuff like this. It blew my mind that the James Webb Telescope uses a custom Javascript runtime for a lot of the onboard functions.
Not the parent, but I like seeing particular languages used for something like this because it may be a langauge that I am familiar with along with all of its libraries and tooling. This makes a project like this that interacts with hardware easier to acheive.
to speak to your example: my girlfriend's dad was a welder on aluminum boats. he is always excited to see aluminum boats, find out who built them, etc.
It's also intresting to see a language used in a way it's not intended to necessarily our for a creative/unique use. Why do people like to port doom to random devices, because it was never indended to run on those (and it's a challenge/meme at this point)
Sorry, late reply, but I think it's still worth answering.
I think Javascript is a really fun language. I've done a lot of embedded C and it can be... exhausting? I would love to try Javascript on an embedded system, IoT device, etc. I'll bet a lot of the most annoying stuff can be abstracted away pretty easily on modern hardware.
As a JavaScript hater, I admit they surely they do, but I'm still curious as to why it was the best choice. If it's a custom runtime, existing runtimes being reliable\secure\well understood by existing engineers isn't relevant. And it's not like they're adding in lots of external libraries either.
no one's doubting it, but they still want to know the reason because it goes contrary to the expectations of most developers here, even the JavaScript fans