Alternatives to JavaScript

Question

At the moment, the only fully supported language, and the de-facto standard for DOM tree manipulation in the browser is JavaScript. It looks like it has deep design issues t

Answer 1

One thing I haven't seen mentioned (oh, I see Alcides mentioned HotRuby while I was writing and Nosredna mentioned GWT and Script#) and would like to throw out there is there are a number of implementations of [insert language]-on-JavaScript (eg. translators that allow you to convert Ruby, Python, C#, Java, Obj-J/Cappuccino [similar to Obj-C/Cocoa] or Processing [for Canvas] to JavaScript either on the client or before deployment [and some of which also feature various abstraction libraries]). Of course there's a performance overhead if it is being translated on the client, but if you are more comfortable with another language it will allow you some flexibility.

Personally, though, I recommend learning to love JavaScript. It's an excellent, powerful language, and pretty elegant once you get to know it. I'm facing the opposite dilemma, chomping at the bit to have a capable server-side JavaScript/DOM solution that meets all of my needs. /unsolicited opinion