[w1ntermute]

How about Ruby or Python?

[TinyBig]

There is already a strong effort in Ruby land - check out http://artoo.io/. Artoo was developed with robotics in mind but it is not limited to that domain.

[ssafejava]

You could - but V8 is actually much faster than Ruby or Python, and JS syntax is quite good for I/O. Better than that, a ton of people know JS and the more developers find this accessible, the better.

[w1ntermute]

> V8 is actually much faster than Ruby or Python

Actually, they are compiling to Lua bytecode in this case.

> JS syntax is quite good for I/O

And you can pass around blocks in Ruby.

[aaronem]

And you can't in Javascript? Sure, the syntax is a little clunky, but the semantics are precisely the same.

[shmerl]

Or Rust for example.