It is easy to talk about the benefits of applying functional programming to Javascript but last year David Nolen turned the client-side world upside by showing that that using immutable data and virtual DOM rendering is faster and safer than any other SPA solution design there has ever been.
I want to talk about how it he did and what the implications are for Javascript programming in general. Even if you don't want to learn about Clojure there has been a massive impact in terms of libraries created as a result and framework design in general that applies to all kinds of client-side programming. There are also huge implications for the future of Javascript if the language is committed to being ES1 compatible.
Immutable, event-driven, functional, atomic! It's the future of Javascript!