"Thought leaders" are hopefully just using the best language suited for the job. It often comes down to what kind of code you are writing and what it needs to run on.
You're doubting that Javascript is a popular language for people pushing the forefront of software development? I'd cite for you a ton of the work being done on node, ember, knockout, backbone, jquery, even some embeddable hardware thing I read about on here the other day. There's a huge amount of energy in that area, lots of extremely smart people.
Or are you just being snobbish about javascript? It's a pretty solid language, and has interpreters installed on virtually every computer on earth with built-in distribution.
My friend, JS has a virtual monopoly on what it does. If there are other client-side browser languages, i have not heard of them.
>It has built-in interpreters (read "Browsers") on every computer.
JS is pretty slow (It uses an interpreter!). The notion of using it on the backend is debatable. "A lot of people are putting a lot of effort in to it" isn't a valid argument. u said it yourself: "people are told to/forced to use it"
As for the hardware thing, didn't you read the HN discussion about that? no body thinks that's a good idea. It just a way to let web devs do something on the hardware without bothering to learn an actual low level language.
>> JS is pretty slow (It uses an interpreter!) The notion of using it on the backend is debatable.
It is pretty fast. It has a world class VM with an optimising JIT compiler. V8 is considerably faster than many other interpreted language, Ruby, Python etc. It's being used on the backend by many smart companies.
>> As for the hardware thing [...] It just a way to let web devs do something on the hardware without bothering to learn an actual low level language.
I know C. I use it when necessary but I'd rather write JS. Apparently so would plenty of other people. It's not about laziness.
"It's a pretty solid language" - can you remind me what should I use "==" or "===" and why should I care? More here: http://wtfjs.com
"has interpreters installed on virtually every computer on earth with built-in distribution" - which means we are stuck with it, thanks very much for "open" web.
JS is, in general, a relatively poorly designed language which is forced upon us (thankfully, not me). Given the choice people would jump ship in a heartbeat.
"Thought leaders" are hopefully just using the best language suited for the job. It often comes down to what kind of code you are writing and what it needs to run on.