One little nitpick:
> What systems programming functionality does Javascript lack?
Here's a starting point: a secure random number generator.
Chrome has actually implemented one (http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/new-chromium-security-featu...). It's a part of WebKit (http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-Feb...).
Firefox has an unimplemented (as of Firefox 6) secure RNG API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript_crypto, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440046).
One little nitpick:
> What systems programming functionality does Javascript lack?
Here's a starting point: a secure random number generator.
Chrome has actually implemented one (http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/new-chromium-security-featu...). It's a part of WebKit (http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-Feb...).
Firefox has an unimplemented (as of Firefox 6) secure RNG API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript_crypto, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440046).