My comment on http://www.nomorejavascript.com/ was deleted. So much for a fair and balanced discussion.
I think the idea is noble, but the people behind the idea are clearly inept.
One big reason JavaScript will be hard to replace is that it's been through years of battle testing and it's security holes have mostly been patched. You would have to start this process from scratch with a new language, which in itself is a good reason not to bother.
Here are my comments in reponse to their arguments for a new language:
- Camel casing is not a language feature. You can use underscores in your variable names if you want.
- node.js is not a library, it's a JavaScript runtime.
- Languages like coffeescript may give you the ruby-ish syntax, but compile to JS. Have you tried coffeescript?
- Many people refer to jQuery from the CDN, in which case it's cached for you in the browser across sites. In any case, jQuery is not a language feature. You're likely to get commonly used libraries in any language you use, so I don't see how changing the language helps.
- If you don't like Angular, don't use it. I don't. It's not a language feature.
- JavaScript the good parts encourages you to avoid prototypes. You don't need to use them.
- It's possible to write Spaghetti code in any language. It's not a feature unique to JavaScript.