[timburks]

Hi Ross, little things add up, and they are easy to fix in higher level languages (with macros). I consider programming to be a process of building abstractions, and I think the best high-level abstractions are concise.

I like to quote Peter Norvig on the subject of interpreted languages. But in his quote, he uses "interactive." Maybe that's a better word:

"Which way would you rather learn to play the piano: the normal, interactive way, in which you hear each note as soon as you hit a key, or "batch" mode, in which you only hear the notes after you finish a whole song? Clearly, interactive mode makes learning easier for the piano, and also for programming. Insist on a language with an interactive mode and use it." - Peter Norvig, Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years.

I've seen Objective-J and generally have good feelings about Javascript. But it's not particularly strong on one other criteria that I like to apply, which is that it should be easy to mix code written at different language levels.

[boucher]

I see the value in being "interactive", but it isn't enough to rule out any other factor in choosing a language.