There is probably just one way to do it

[punkish]

TMTOWTDI is one of the chief points (positive or negative depends on the POV) of our favorite language. I certainly find it to be a plus point. Followers of other languages sometimes use that as a strike against Perl. While tackling a programming task earlier today, it occurred to me that while we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to languages on the server side, within the browser we have only JavaScript. The downside is that I have to work within the innovations confined by the limits of JavaScript (I was actually looking for a MVC toolkit for JavaScript, but that is another story). The plus side is that when I encounter a problem, I don't have to offer pseudocode to to others who might want to help me -- I can offer real code because if they can help me with my browser-side problem, they *have* to know JavaScript.

If there is only one way to do it, would that be a positive or a negative?

Why is it that alternatives to JavaScript have not developed or gained traction (ECMAScript and VBScript don't count -- they are all really JavaScript -- frankly, other than VBScript, I don't even know the difference between the other two).