It seems as if JS is the future, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be nice if JS had a few more features to make it easier to use. I personally wouldn't be opposed to starting clean (with something like Dart) but that's probably unrealistic.
Overall, the reduction of plugins is a good thing, who doesn't like less security holes, less software to update, etc. But it's also a bad thing if we lost features off stuff, lose functionality, loss cross-browser capabilities etc.
Also, can't believe I said "righting" instead of "writing" in my last post. That's quite cringe-inducing.
