[wwweston]

Really depends on what we talk about as the tool or the problem.

To the extent the claims is "JavaScript the language is the problem"... if somehow Scheme or Python had become the de facto scripting language of the browser in the mid 90s, we'd be having the same conversation. If JavaScript is obliterated by WebAssembly... we'll be having the same conversation (in fact, I predict webassembly -- along with every other effort to treat the browser primarily as nothing more than the universal VM that succeeded -- will exacerbate this problem).

If the conversation is about the fundamental problem of the various incentives to utilize the full computing potential of the browser as a platform even when a document model will do, then "JavaScript" is just shorthand for that since it's the primary language of utilization, and it's pretty easy to realize the tool is the role it fills rather than a specific language.

[TeMPOraL]

I agree and I realize now I need to say this explicitly instead of picking on JS directly.

I thought long about this in the past, and I think JS itself is not a problem - it's just a poor language. The problem is JS + DOM API + CSS + bunch of other things that browsers provide. I feel there's too much creative control allowed for on the web. The language itself matters little; what does is that publishers can shove ridiculous amount of code with little effort, and that the user/publisher balance over control of rendering is so heavily tilted towards the latter.