I will assume you're referring to Node. The browser explains why many coders know Javascript well; the fact that many coders know Javascript well explains the popularity of Node --without our having to resort to the hypothesis that Javascript is a good language.

I'm referring to the adoption of javascript as the scripting language for browsers. Why else do "many coders know javascript well"?

The story of how we got Javascript in browsers has absolutely nothing to do with "adoption".

But there wasn't anything stopping early browsers from using a different scripting language. They stuck with javascript. Was that because it was a good language?

And what about Java, for example? And why don't people "flock" to LISP, say, or Haskell? Are those "bad" languages, now? And what about software, like windows- is windows widely used because it's a great operating system?

Adoption is a rotten bad measure of quality. Not just in programming languages- in everything.

> But there wasn't anything stopping early browsers from using a different scripting language.

You mean "nothing stopping the other browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, from adopting Netscape's Javascript too".

Well yes. Don't the other browser vendors count as adopters?

agreed. after i learned common lisp and smalltalk, i realized that since there has hardly been any innovation in programming since the first languages half a century ago.

Indeed, you can program the browser in whatever you want, yet they insist on using JS.

Plot twist: people never "flocked" to Javascript. People use Node for example because the company they are working for thought that it would be nice, efficient and less costly to have one language for the whole platform. They mostly learned their lesson since then and moved on to real languages which can be used on the backend.