[Gabriel439]

A closer analogy to Dhall would be if web pages were assembled entirely from JavaScript instead of HTML, URLs were just pointers to Javascript expressions, and JavaScript code could refer to other JavaScript code anywhere within the syntax tree just by URL (instead of out-of-band via a <script> directive)

[dahart]

I don't know Dhall, but that sounds like what we already have. URLs are already pointers to JavaScript expressions, and many websites are already JS that constructs HTML... that's the main direction React is going, for example. The script directives are irrelevant, it'd be easy to show equivalence without them. And I don't see what any of this has to do with writing programs that don't read inputs or write outputs.

[Gabriel439]

Right, and where I'm going with this is that we should take the JavaScript model to its natural conclusion and use it more pervasively in other domains. In other words, more applications and domains should be configured via sandboxed and interpreted programs that can easily reference other programs

However, the difference is that I don't think we should use an untyped and Turing-complete language for doing this (which is my primary objection to JavaScript). Also, I think the mechanism for referring to other programs should be more lightweight (i.e. just dump the path and URL into your code and you're done)