A lot of people in this thread have misconceptions about what AppleScript is and what it means for JavaScript to be an alternative. I recommend watching the WWD

A lot of people in this thread have misconceptions about what AppleScript is and what it means for JavaScript to be an alternative. I recommend watching the WWDC session [1] if you can, and skip to 16 minutes in (through minute 20) for a quick explanation of what this actually is. TL;DR shell scripting for the GUI, not a way to build Mac applications (which you can already do with JS). Edit: video link Double edit: Looks like I'm slightly wrong about using JS to build apps this way. You can bundle scripts as applications, and OSA can create windows and controls, so you could hypothetically build whole apps this way. But I'm not sure I would want to. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#306 https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#306