[jaggederest]

I think a big part of the problem is precisely the interpreted and web browser part of your post, so you're right, but I think at this point it's difficult to disabiguate the browser, the DOM, and JavaScript. I think JavaScript as a language also has problems that make it difficult to do large scale engineering with, thus transpilers.

Maybe WebAssembly will provide fruitful ground for new, simpler, and more rigorous languages.

I also think that much of modern web apps could be accomplished better with HATEOS apps doing pure server side. But I will allow that my beliefs there are at least partly nostalgic

[zachrose]

Using Elm, even a little bit, has given me a perspective on what a different language can do in the browser.

If you subscribe to Gary Benhardt’s Capability/Suitability theory of programming history [1], JavaScript is the highly capable technology that can be used for any sort of architecture you can imagine, and Elm is a turn towards suitability that says, “some of those architectures are unsound or have a very low floor for quality.”

You might want to abstract over DOM APIs for different reasons, but at their semantic core they are fine.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NftT6HWFgq0