Great article, it is amazing to look at how much Javascript has changed in the last couple decades. I remember thinking how cool it was in 1999 to implement a Javascript clock on a side frame on my website…even though I had a clock in the bottom right hand corner of my desktop :) Now, even though I only dabble a bit, it is staggering what can be accomplished.

We always need to take into consideration other factors when looking at how things are ‘sped up’ though. Hardware advances (whether processor, memory, or storage speed increases) have a significant influence on things getting faster, as well as the massive increase in network bandwidth/speeds.

As well, in our current paradigm, most things are written in something else, a lower level language. the Narcissus example was implemented using the Spidermonkey engine I believe, which is written in C and C++ if I remember correctly.

Browser/web based applications are the way things are going now however, which does give us a lot more flexibility, combined with the advances in hardware and network throughput. Even the new radio automation software we have put in recently at my work has some browser based tools and uses more of a container/widget approach, and this type of software has traditionally been somewhat proprietary and used a classic application model.