It has a BNF that’s different from any other language, so it’s definitely a language. A language isn’t defined by its runtime.
> Think PHP for scripting.
PHP is a language...
> J2EE wasn't just a framework
What language features did J2EE introduce?
> You can't argue that it's not all bloat, as the resulting JS it produces runs fine without it all
Yeah, just like C, which compiles yo machine code, is complete bloat.