[barrkel]

The comparable JS architecture would use little more than a canvas. Normally, JS manipulates a retained mode render graph, i.e. DOM+CSS. That enormous abstraction stack both empowers JS - you can get a lot done with very little code - and slows it down.

It's more "native" because the stack is much shorter, much more direct. If it was more common to have plain JS interacting directly with input APIs and plain canvas, the argument for parity would be stronger. But it's just very rarely the case.