Really great read... I used to write a lot of JScript in classic ASP, as well as the MS script runtime in windows... I think the only really ugly part was when you had to deal with COM enumerations. I also used to use hidden frames as post targets and use JSONP-like callbacks into request queues... most often I'd use the ADO option which allows for a response to be serialized into a string specifying a field and row delimiter.. I'd have my client-side script split this out. I also remember it being much faster early on to fully re-render a frame vs. manipulating the DOM for a lot of things. DHTML while supporting NN4/IE4 was a pain.

I couldn't be happier for where JS has come.. I use node's tooling daily, and although I do use BabelJS for ES6 features, I find it to be a very good fit (with more functional thinking) for a lot of problems.