I personally think that JavaScript is one of the most meaningful and important languages that exists today. This needn't imply that JavaScript's syntax, or its semantics are to be emulated (though we're seeing a bunch of welcome improvements in recent versions of JS). The thing I like most about JavaScript is that it allows anyone, anywhere to easily deploy and share code with anyone anywhere.

So I hope this helps explains why many people feel that compiling to JS is important, even if the syntax/semantics of JS are not equally sought after by those same people.

At the same time, we can't overlook that JavaScript has become one of the most popular languages today. If that were the case thirty years ago, I'm sure the syntax for the ML family would have taken that into account somehow, at least to convey the parts of the two languages that actually are similar - even if only for things as simple as comments. So at least in this V0.0.1 of Reason, some of the things that just don't matter tend to look like things that are familiar to a larger set of people.

I think you've picked up on what looks like an inconsistency in messaging so thanks for pointing it out. I can't speak for everyone else who works on Reason, but I see the two major components (compiling to, and resembling) JavaScript to be largely independent. We can want to compile to JavaScript for totally different reasons than we want some pieces of the grammar to resemble JavaScript and I believe that is the case here. The pieces that currently resemble JavaScript are that way simply because those pieces don't matter too much and why not just be familiar? There are certain syntax features of JS that members of the JS community would tell you were mistakes, and we're not looking to recreate them just for the sake of being like JS.