Chris Heilmann gave a talk about breaking out of endless callback loops in JavaScript development. He discussed the history and evolution of JavaScript, including its growing capabilities and uses. However, he emphasized that progressive enhancement and capability testing are still important principles on the client side to avoid broken experiences. While tools like transpilation and polyfills can help bring future features to current browsers, overreliance on them has downsides. The best approach is to embrace JavaScript's use in different environments and balance innovation with backward compatibility.