VimL Script language: what is an acceptable alternative?

Question

Problem: One of my favorite aspects of Vim is its flexibility. One of my least favorite is the VimL script language itself. I know everyone has his or her own preference for languages and editors, so I take it for granted that not everyone agrees with me.

Question: If you are a Vim user, and if you have had a similar disaffection for using VimL to extend vim, what alternatives have you used in order to extend Vim while avoiding the default language? I am looking for ideas that may help beyond what I've already tried, including, but not limited to:

• recompiling vim with the add-on support for python, ruby, and perl (nice, but it does not help when I am running vim on someone else's machine without that support added in)
• never writing a line of VimL script and simply download preexisting add-ons (great, if and only if the existing stuff does exactly what you want it to, not so great if you have to make a change and end up having to look at more VimL script)

Disclaimer: Note, this is not a slam against VimL script or anyone's preferences. If it works great for you, that's great! I'm just asking those who have found a need for an alternative, and a way to fulfill that need to their satisfaction.

Answer 1

Most likely whatever fits your development ecosystem. ie a language you're likely to use outside just vim itself as it has helpful support libraries

I personally used +python in this trac plugin

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2147

after extensively using and learning from this awesome debugger script...

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1929

As far as working on other machines usually you just live without stuff for small jobs. but you can always use netrw for scp etc if needed..

but really it's whatever you want to learn and can use