Currently, the Gmail program is comprised of 443,000 lines of JavaScript, with 978,000 lines if comments are included. All of it was written by hand, he said.

During the question-and-answer session, De Boor was asked if he was comfortable using JavaScript for such a large project.

He admitted that another language, such as Java itself, might be more optimized, but he also noted that Java is a lot more verbose as well. "At this point to me it's a matter of choice which language you use," he said. He defended JavaScript's performance, though.

"Most of the irritation around JavaScript comes from how it is implemented in browsers," he said.

The IDG News Service