First off Scala is amazing -- I'm using it for API servers -- so I'm very curious how your framework turns out=).
As you might imagine I would disagree that JS is the wrong language simply because it _is_ the web. Clearly abstracting JS to other languages can be quite useful (CoffeeScript), but by making your building blocks in JS every developer, library, or framework can use them. They become universal. If OJ can add YouTubeVideos, anyone can. It would be harder to do this if it was written in another language.
I agree with you that JS has more wide-spread appeal. But it just is not the right tool for the job. Obviously, I have to be clear about the job. The job is writing a web application that lets gmail look like a school project.
but contrary to what people believe you dont create such apps with a big monolitic framework , but by using a lot of little modular libs. Gmail is build on google closure lib which is exactly that.
As you might imagine I would disagree that JS is the wrong language simply because it _is_ the web. Clearly abstracting JS to other languages can be quite useful (CoffeeScript), but by making your building blocks in JS every developer, library, or framework can use them. They become universal. If OJ can add YouTubeVideos, anyone can. It would be harder to do this if it was written in another language.