Initial prototype of browser.html was written in plain JS, but as scope grow it started to be unmanageable. React was new hotness, which we have explored but were disappointed by performance and a difficulty of working with non-standard web components. This lead me to develop reflex that featured swappable view drivers (doing virtual/real DOM diff/patch) and was heavily inspired by The Elm Architecture. DominionRunning complex JS UI logic in the UI thread meant dropped frame sooner or later.
Another way of approaching the implementation versus abstraction issue when it comes to misconceptions about programming languages and their toolchains/runtimes is to make "[programming languages are notation, and] notation is not machinery" something of a catchphrase.
This passage is something like an ideal target (case study is misapprehension).