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Why would you introduce that distinction into what is an inherently dynamic language? "virtual" keyword in C++ is an option to avoid paying the cost for a polymorphic call (so it can be inlined at compile time and/or no extra pointer dereference is done). It's a compromise to allow incremental cost of language features--but in JavaScript?

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There are certain optimizations that I am able to perform by knowing if a function is virtual or not---this is especially important in the Trait implementation.

However, the original intent is based on compelling rationale from C#. I cannot find the original article where the article explains the rationale, but aside from optimization benefits and self-documenting code, he makes the point that virtual methods are essentially callbacks/hooks into existing code; you therefore need to put careful thought into how to handle those virtual methods properly and expose the proper APIs.

That's probably the one part that really didn't make sense. But maybe he did it for sport.

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