You can't make history something it's not. You might or might not remember visiting the web soon after javascript was released. It involved a lot of broken code

You can't make history something it's not. You might or might not remember visiting the web soon after javascript was released. It involved a lot of broken code, and a lot of error pop ups. Javascript was, historically, a dumb easy scripting language for simple interactive effects on the web. When we're talking about a script that is downloaded from a server, and runs in a browser, that is a much different kind of situation than a programming language usually encounters. It is in the browser maker's interest to be liberal about what it accepts. this is the core reason for the success of html, and the failure of xhtml. as much as the makers of javascript would like to remove certain problematic features, they cannot without breaking old existing content. Now if you want a strict language in the browser that disallows that sort of nonsense, it's easy. Just run JSLINT on your code before deploying it. JSLint considers as an error, pretty much all of your complaints here. If you don't like some aspect of javascript, you can simply not use it. If there's something jslint doesn't catch, I suppose you could always add stuff to jslint. JSLINT is your static compiler. There are solutions to your pain and suffering. you don't have to endure it.