Higher level abstractions in computing are of obvious value. Many more people know Javascript than know HDL, an assembly variant or even C. It's pretty obvious why this would be helpful. If you know a little bit of Javascript you can get out of the browser and have physical stuff happen. Pretty neat hack if you ask me.
So what is one to do once they have designed a system using this platform? Do you want to turn it into a product? Great! Go redesign the entire thing from the ground up because what you made is a toy.
It can't be manufactured at a reasonable cost. The code will have to be completely rewritten. The hardware has to be completely re-specced. What a waste of time.
There are plenty of micro platforms our there these days that require relatively little knowledge of hardware,yet at least resemble something you may actually see in the real world. Use those.
That said, I could see myself being proven wrong here,which is fine. It would only take some enthusiastic person who already knows JavaScript and has some revolutionary idea to-do do so.
My opinion is that you don't need to sit on mountains of abstraction at all times. No abstraction I'd perfect and we already have enough people in this industry who don't really understand what the hell they're doing. Learning something new isn't a bad thing.
People are not going to buy a Tessel to build a production-grade hardware project. It is for hobbyists.
Probably, they don't want to turn it into a product. Probably, they just want to use it themselves. In this case it makes total sense to improve speed of development despite increasing unit cost.
Do you honestly think that there is anyone out there who bought a Tessel instead of an Arduino/Raspberry/etc.? Every single person I know who ordered a Tessel is someone who wasn't interested in hardware originally AT ALL. The premise of the Tessel got them interested in playing around with hardware.
Edit: I answered this seriously because I assumed OP was a serious comment. After re-reading, I'm not certain, so I apologize if it wasn't.
