JavaScript needs to fly from its comfy nest, and learn to survive on its own, on equal terms with other languages and run-times. It’s time to grow up, kid.

If JavaScript were detached from the client and server platforms, the pressure of being a monoculture would be lifted — the next iteration of the JavaScript language or run-time would no longer have to please every developer in the world, but instead could focus on pleasing a much smaller audience of developers who love JavaScript and thrive with it, while enabling others to move to alternative languages or run-times.

Despite a growing variety of languages that compile to JavaScript, the language itself remains the dominant language in both client-side and server-side eco-systems for web development. The idea of replacing JavaScript with languages that compile to JavaScript, has been explored, and for whatever reasons, it hasn’t really liberated anyone from JavaScript.

We standardize on a finite subset of JS (such as asm.js) — and avoid the endless struggle through future iterations of the JavaScript language, competing super-sets and transpilers

agree to accept JavaScript for what it is, but start to think of it as a kind of VM for other languages