Todd,
There is a reason I put "real" in quotes. It's not to denegrate "scripting" languages. I use the term because there's no good replacement. I could say "typed, compiled language" but while more precise it isn't actually accurate.
I do get a little tired of the false marketing-engineering dichotomy. I mean, don't we want marketing to reflect sound engineering practices? (Suppressing snicker at the use of that phrase to describe programming.) Sure, a lot of times it doesn't, but occasionally it is accurate. In this case, I've spent most of the last year building a workflow engine and a personalization engine. These things don't actually care that your display is web-based. Web-based UI is certainly a big challenge for sophisticated applications, but it shouldn't actually be a factor in the application design.