Instead of Javascript
...why are we taking the one of the most irritating languages around and putting it on the server rather than dedicating some effort to picking one of the many excellent languages that exist already and making it run in the browser?
Because Ryan Dahl got there first. Less flippantly, because it's easier to write a language for a server than it is for a browser, and even if you manage it, there's still the question of getting the browser makers -- a dwindling number, but still more than one -- to adopt your language.
We're sort of approaching your scenario -- if you view js as something to compile to, instead of a language to develop in, then emscripten is doing good work, and my current programming interest, coffeescript, has cleaned up a lot of js flaws (although not the '+' operator flaw, alas).
