> This is a bit OT, but it seems like Angular apps have similar problems to distributed objects, where you can wind up making lots of network calls to retrieve one of these, all of those, etc. I'm curious what advice people have about that.

You need to make a distinction between remote and local calls. You need something that looks a bit like function calls - not a several-line ceremony for each call - but also that clearly isn't the same thing as a function call, and you need a way to make sure you don't get the two mixed up. You need (whisper it) monads.

I've heard that new versions of Angular will have Dart as a primary platform? Maybe they can make a type-level distinction between remote and local calls in that language?