[erikpukinskis]

I agree. JavaScript obviously has problems but it’s also the most used development platform of all time.

Part of that is because the runtime API really doesn’t change much. And for many years the only changes allowed were very tightly scoped: a single new function call, that takes two strings. Stuff like that. The attitude was “what is the smallest thing we can do to make it technically possible for to get the job done” and leave developer ergonomics to the web frameworks.

It forces people to build real platform layers on top of the browser. That causes fragmentation but it is also a hot crucible for competition. It has led to arguably the most competitive developer tool landscape of all time.

It’s easy to say “browsers should just standardize on X” and be right.

However it’s exactly the very slow acceptance of standards that had led to such a strong ecosystem of ideas. So in the aggregate, as you indicate, it’s not good to land on standards too fast.