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Javascript will need to fix the mess that is its numeric types. As it currently is, you either need a bignum library with an ungodly syntax, or you are open to losing precision above a certain level, without warning. I tried solving Euler problems with JS, but it's so painful I switched back to Python after a few.

The value objects proposal for es6/es7 might fix that:

http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:value_object...

> Is there a numeric library (like Scipy/pandas) hooked up to asm.js yet? I can imagine that being faster than Python.

Faster than Python using LAPACK and other native libs?

CoffeeScript proved to a lot of people how much more enjoyable JS could be with some of the lessons in language ergonomics learned from Python and Ruby. I think that ES6 really reflects this. With some of the long awaited improvements, like better lambdas, generators, Set/Map, assignment sugar, better metaprogramming of objects, and standard-blessed implementations promises and classes, I think that JS is finally close to being able to compete in the multi-paradigm space. Sweet.js (or some other macro layer) will also really help in letting people develop new syntactic abstractions for domain-specific stuff. It'll be interesting to see how it all develops.