[metachor]

Can you explain what some of those lower level functions are on the web that need a lower level language? As far as I can tell, the lowest level of the web is sending a static document to the requester via HTTP. Any lower than that and you are talking about TCP/IP sockets, etc.

In the domain of Operating Systems this makes more sense, because the OS or kernel is generally written in the low level language that is being asked about (i.e. C). Any higher-level language is generally implemented in terms of the low level language, making it available as a fall back for low level tasks (i.e. tasks on the OS/kernel level).

I'm just not sure how this concept of lower-level languages applies to the web.

[DanielStraight]

I'm talking low-level in terms of design and page manipulation, not architecture. CSS is the lowest level available for formatting websites. For formatting desktop apps, you can go straight to the graphics card and paint individual pixels on the screen. There is simply no equivalent in the browser. I suppose you can, strictly speaking, paint individual pixels in the browser with absolute-positioned divs, but this is clearly impractical.