In "Greater Expectations - Reality-Checking the AJAX Web Application Architecture", Steffen spends quite a bit of time beating up the javascript syntax and web programming in general. However he does come down on the side of Ajax (despite its name) in that it removes the requirement for a server-side session state for transient sessions.
He cheers up a little towards the end saying javascript has been compared to Lisp with C syntax. I get the distinct impression that he was speaking from a hardcore programmer's point of view, but unfortunately this made a lot of what he was saying difficult to understand for many of the mere web programmers out there.
I'd love to see that 1-to-1 virtual reality model of the entire world.