But would it mean that? Would using server-side javascript make the project less likely to happen? How many projects absolutely depend on the language they're implemented in - especially given that javascript gives you all the scripting features that c++/java lack.
Would using server-side javascript make the project less likely to happen?
Yes. The library infrastructure of server-side JavaScript is pitiable compared to Python (or C++ or Java). This will change, I have no doubt, and I believe JavaScript will become the most popular language for practically everything short of systems programming in the not too distant future (7-10 years, perhaps), but it's definitely not as easy to build a server-side app in JavaScript today as it is in Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.
But Rhino has the same performance issues as Python and Perl and Ruby, doesn't it?
According to one benchmark ( http://ejohn.org/apps/speed/ ), Rhino is generally several orders of magnitude slower than Spidermonkey and Tamarin. Which probably means that it is also orders of magnitude slower than Python, Perl and Ruby.
Since JavaScript was suggested as an alternative to Python to act as a reasonable substitute for C++ and Java for performance reasons, suggesting a JavaScript implementation that seems to be dramatically slower than even Python seems nonsensical.
While JavaScript is a lovely language, and I'm all for it being used more on the server-side, Rhino only solves the lack of libraries problem when compared to Python...it does not solve the performance/memory problem of using Python at Google scale.
Unless, of course, things have changed dramatically since any of the benchmarks I found were run.
