Exactly. I recently put together a presentation that gives an overview of modern web development [0], and two of the slides address this issue in particular:

Javascript/Client Challenges

- No built-in module definition system

- No encapsulation

- Prototypal-based inheritance system unlike most languages

- No static type declarations or compilation

- Dynamically modified objects and data

- Minimal standard library

- Variations in browser capabilities

- Document layout model repurposed for application layouts

Javascript/Client Dev Goals

- Minimize bytes sent over the wire

- Handle browser compatibility issues

- Fill in gaps in JS standard library and language spec

- Reuse and share code between apps

- Build increasingly complex full-blown applications that just happen to live inside a browser

[0] http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/10/presentation-modern...