MochiKit has the slogan “Mochikit makes JavaScript suck less.” A worthy goal; now, you may not think that JavaScript sucks (I’ve become rather fond of JavaScript), but these fellows are comparing it to Perl, Python, Objective-C, etc. It seems that many of the features of Mochikit are inspired by Python in particular, which is interesting all by itself.
Worth an investigation.
Is it just me, or is JavaScript in the process of cementing itself as the programming language of the internet? Sure, you can use Python, Perl, PHP… if your server supports it. JavaScript runs everywhere, and it seems that it will continue to do so, in all major browsers, for the forseeable future.
I wonder; is it even realistic to ponder an alternative to JavaScript? There isn’t much incentive for a browser-writer to build in a Python interpreter when we already have JavaScript and DOM… but what if you could direct people to download a plugin, like a Firefox extension, which would enable them to use pages written with an alternative scripting language? It isn’t that far-fetched; this is basically what the Flash-player is. The key, of course, would be that this alternative scripting language would have to be somehow better than JavaScript; to be successful, I’d guess that it would have to be attractive to both developers and users.
The bottom line, as with everything, is why? I don’t know if anyone else is considering things like this; on the other hand, if there are all these toolkits (Prototype, script.aculo.us, dojo, mochikit, etc) whose whole raison d’etre is to improve JavaScript, maybe there is a desire for a better internet scripting language… Hmm.
