[caitp]

While I haven't used it personally, I've heard of people shipping Node.js as part of iOS apps (and, for that matter, as part of Firefox extensions), but even without Node.js, most of these devices will have some JS runtime, in or outside of a browser/webview.

As for Python, I would be less hopeful about the presence of Python on smart phones and tablets, although I suppose anything is possible.

Usually you are cross-compiling to target mobile platforms, so you don't generally need to worry about a given toolchain being present on the device itself.

[CyberFonic]

I doubt you would be able to do "systems" level programming in either JavaScript or Python.

If you are thinking of cross-compiling, then you could look at Go from Google - it has many of the advantages of C, yet a lot of conveniences afforded by Python and similar languages.

[caitp]

I'm fairly sure they're not writing device drivers or TCP/IP stacks, so they likely don't depend on a systems level language. A lot of work has gone into enabling people to write their apps using these interpreted languages, but the availability of one particular language or runtime on a mobile device is not always guaranteed.

I think they're asking what their options are, really.