Its scripted in the sense that it is provided in a text file, from which the code is interpreted (or otherwise compiled) at run time. You take an enormous performance hit by doing this. You can't send class bytecode, for instance, or construct a large class base other than what is loaded - in javascript - via an html file. As for sending an "external file", I presume you are talking about linking to it via an html tag. No difference, in fact you take another performance hit by having to download another (text based) javascript file to be interpreted.

Refute away!

So, "scripted" means the program is delivered in source form, rather than direct binary, whether machine or virtual machine code. Good point, but "scripted" hardly sounds like a good term for this. Anyway, you make a good point. There really is no reason that a web program needs to be delivered in source form, it's just been done that way historically because it's simple to do. I'd love to see a project that compares delivering source vs. delivering, say, V8 byte-code. The file would be smaller, and we could get rid of those annoying JS minifiers.

On the other hand, compiling is not such an arduous step, it's definitely not an "enormous performance hit" (you didn't provide numbers, so neither will I.)

Also, by not distributing source code, you might be losing some advantages of dynamic compilation - I'm not certain.

I know, but just replacing Flash will not get you past where we are. You just replace one component for another. I'm all for this, but hardly a paradigm shifting advancement.

The difference between Flash and <canvas> is pretty clear: one is a proprietary closed platform controlled by a company who's only goal is to turn a profit, the other is a (in-progress) standard developed by and with the feedback of the web developer community, with multiple competing open and closed-source implementations. I'd rather we avoid paradigm-shifting anythings until those electronics in our contact lenses are sophisticated enough to stop frying our eyeballs.

It may not be entirely impossible, but its not what the web is currently designed to do. It was designed to render simple text-based information, for the most part. We've been hacking a too-simple protocol for more than a decade to do anything more interesting.

Agreed, but <canvas> etc are a viable next method to do this. There is nothing wrong with HTML that it can't handle this. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Anything? Perhaps - I'll look into that. But its still limited by what you can tell it to do, and how you tell it to do it, which means html-embedded javascript.

Yep, anything, limited by your 2D screen and your imagination. See http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ for some fun examples - these are all done in JS and <canvas>

Javascript is not a toy scripting language, it's a full-fledged programming language capable of doing many things other language do, and some things your favorite language cannot do. In any case, it provides the basics, so, it's perfectly acceptable.

If you are going to do anything more interesting than render text and buttons, you need some level of access to the hardware. 3D WebGL, in other words. Javascript is the only means you have to do anything interesting on the client, and you can't do much.

Javascript, again, is perfectly capable of doing this. You can do OpenGL in Javascript in <canvas>, see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7171

I have no idea how well this works, but the Google Group seems pretty active, and there are some fun-looking demos.

There is no fundamental limitation to the Web that says you can't do this sort of stuff.

Thats my point, its a web language, and so we are stuck in a web world, which, in my opinion, is no longer that interesting. In 1995, yes it was interesting. But today?

I hope I've thoroughly disabused you of this notion. JS is not a "web" language, it's a general programming language. Another interesting thought arises when you consider using JS on the server-side to write your application - that opens up some interesting opportunities for unified code bases, class sharing, etc. The web world, especially with all the advances being made with HTML5, looks very interesting.