Jim,

> I wonder whether substituting rudimentary class definitions
> for "first class" functions might make sense. Wouldn't be JavaScript
> anymore, but that wasn't a goal in the first place.

Come to think of it, you would probaly end up recreating something like
Squirrel. 6K lines of C++, 250kB compiled.
http://www.squirrel-lang.org/

It's pretty neat, has a C/Java like syntax, does classes and closures,
exception handling and soft typing. At the language level it repeats
the Lua mistake not to differentiate between Null and Undefined. It
does refcounting & mark&sweep GC, no incremental option. Runs at about
half the speed of Lua, but much faster than any JS. Liberal license.

Shouldn't be hard to add db built-in class(es) to Squirrel. Could also
be a good base to do a domain specific language.

Paul