"Interesting article but I for one genuinely prefer libraries to syntactic language changes."

I feel like there is some terminology confusion here (I already replied to someone else in the same vein).

I think it makes more sense to say "I prefer libraries that do not introduce syntactic language changes to ones that do." Technically, I would say Objective-J is a Javascript library, in addition to being a language in and of itself.

I think that Prototype, jQuery, etc. also add some syntactic changes, so I would say the difference is one of degree, not of kind.

At that point, we are venturing into LISP territory where the line between mini-language and library is truly thin (and sometimes non-existant like in the CL loop macro).

My standard: Can a common JS interpreter (say firefox) execute the code without modifications?

If that is true, then said "thing" is a library.

Check out parenscript. http://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/ It is the only non js way of coding js that ever made sense to me. I saw Vladmir speak at an event and he got js and lisp.

I have looked through some of the code for parenscript and although I'm not a lisp expert I could grok what it was doing. I could also see how I could write my own macros if I put my mind to it. One huge advantage of compiling to js is that it makes obfuscation and compression a lot easier (this is true for GWT, objective-j, pyjamas, and parenscript).

"LISP territory where the line between mini-language and library is truly thin"

Which demonstrates how successful Brandon Eich was when he set out to make Javascript a Lisp-like language.