On the other hand, if someone comes up with a deviation of JavaScript, such as ActionScript 3, that may turn out to be a great alternative, but I can’t stand JavaScript as it exists in web browsers.

No. There’s no justification for it. It’s a lightweight, toylike language that’s not even in the same league as serious server-side languages like Java and C#. There is simply no reason not to use Java or C# – they are rich, powerful, object-oriented languages with extensive, sophisticated object libraries from third-parties. There’s nothing you can’t do with them.

JavaScript implmentation is NOT from a central body

Although ECMAscript is – JavaScript and JScript are dialects of that.

Server side JS is very young

Well, actually, it has been around a long time; classic ASP, Netscape’s LiveScript, and Obtree have been around for 10 years or more. But the implementations were never particularly successful or widely used.

That is very true. JS is a syntax, that is identical above whatever implementation of JS you use. So a JS implementation in spidermonkey is equivalent to that in helma, as far as syntax.

So if you love the JS syntax, which many do, it would be a great choice to use JS server side. The current implementations on JS on the server are only that, implementations. There will be better choices to choose from in the future.

Unlike a language such as PHP, or .Net, JavaScript implmentation is NOT from a central body. Many independent implementations exist, though they inherit the same syntax, they differ significantly in how you write your applications (similar to how ROR is a popular Ruby Framework, but not the language itself).

Server side JS is very young, and thus many implementations exist, as well as your own custom implementation. This can be seen as a strength, if you may.

JS is a syntax above the implementation, whether it be C or Java etc. So in essence you have the power of the lower level language, yet the benefits of a syntax developed for scripting, JavaScript.

JavaScript is much more fun to write than PHP. And I’m not saying “more fun” because I can make text blink. The syntax for arrays and objects is a joy, instead of a chore, and closures are handy.

Well said! I’ve written some game stuff just for fun in JavaScript and really appreciate it’s facility for arrays.

As a full-time web developer for the computer department for several hospitals, over the years I’ve written many web applications, using HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, LDAP, and JavaScript, including AJAX.

JavaScript is much more fun to write than PHP. And I’m not saying “more fun” because I can make text blink. The syntax for arrays and objects is a joy, instead of a chore, and closures are handy.

Server-side JavaScript could come with all the convenient functions that other languages have — for file I-O, database connections, etc. And I would not want to have to enclose it in script tags, like I’ve seen with Jaxer. I would rather make a file with an extension like .jss or .jsx and just put the raw JavaScript in there.

I would even like to see it adopt PHP’s ability to go in and out of HTML. If done properly, it is basically a built-in templating language that’s very easy.

Moreover it’s wrong to think that if a developer already knows client-side JavaScript he’ll easily pick-up server-side JavaScript. It’s wrong. Yes, the syntax is same, but the libraries are different. There are far more things you want to have on the server that don’t currently present in the client version.

One can argue that people use .NET and C# for everything including Windows applications, client-side web application (Silverlight) and web server-side (ASP.NET) but in the all these cases, people not only use C# but more importantly the use the standard .NET class library.