I'm no javascript developer, so I see it only from the user perspective. Maybe the developers aren't doing a good job, I don't know. But all javascript gui I've tried (gmail, mibit, meebo) are far slower than any other e-mail reader, irc client and IM client I've seen, respectively. And the javascript clients lack lots of features, which I think is probably due to javascript being so hard to program.
If the goal of the web is to deliver a good platform for running programs, shouldn't javascript, DOM, or whatever it takes for writting programs for web be reviewed?
When I said I wasn't a javascript developer, I meant I never actively wrote big programs in it, but I did a bit of hacking with it. I found it much more annoying to program than python, for instance.
No offence intended, but I do not know such thing as fast rich -GUI JavaScript apps.
I can't understand why this thing http://www.bindows.com/ is consuming my CPU
I've seen (and worked on) incredibly complex javascript that is also very fast. It's a matter of writing efficient code, and avoiding some of the "pitfalls" of specific browser implementations.