"Interestingly, the Google Apps Scripting language appears to be a (civilized) form of JavaScript, and it looks very powerful"
This doesn't really compute. Google Apps Script is a (very cool) JavaScript API to interact with Google Apps. It's not a replacement for JavaScript, it's not a language at all.
"you read it you begin to understand why it's taken so long for AJAX libraries to appear"
It did take a long time, but libraries have been around for many years now (e.g. Dojo since 2004 and jQuery since 2006).
Saying that, the article has a valid point about the language being hard to use without such libraries. The trends in the video he linked to ("Learning to Love JavaScript") will begin to address that, but it will take time. There's the risk of browser fragmentation and the large legacy base.
This doesn't really compute. Google Apps Script is a (very cool) JavaScript API to interact with Google Apps. It's not a replacement for JavaScript, it's not a language at all.
"you read it you begin to understand why it's taken so long for AJAX libraries to appear"
It did take a long time, but libraries have been around for many years now (e.g. Dojo since 2004 and jQuery since 2006).
Saying that, the article has a valid point about the language being hard to use without such libraries. The trends in the video he linked to ("Learning to Love JavaScript") will begin to address that, but it will take time. There's the risk of browser fragmentation and the large legacy base.