"I wrote a single page web based email client in 2003, years before the launch of Gmail" Gmail was launched in April 2004, not "years before". A nit, I know. I

"I wrote a single page web based email client in 2003, years before the launch of Gmail" Gmail was launched in April 2004, not "years before". A nit, I know. I can summarize this article as "Javascript sucks". That was true for a long time, but the world has moved on since 2003. ES5 strict mode fixed some of the issues. ES6 fixes a lot more. Since then many frameworks and tools have been developed as coping mechanisms. Closure Compiler, CoffeeScript, GWT, TypeScript, Flow, etc. I'd actually say that client side Javascript hasn't gone far enough. There is much to do to improve the Web platform itself, and relying excessively on server rendered markup that gracefully degrades is not going to convince people to stop writing native code, if anything, it'll make it far worse, as network radio latency makes relying on server round trips for UI transitions bad on even the best mobile networks, and extremely bad in developing world wireless environments.