3 ms·

WebAssembly will hopefully end JavaScript's stranglehold on the web. The justification for using JavaScript for server/desktop/mobile applications seems to ess

by n00b101 10y ago

WebAssembly will hopefully end JavaScript's stranglehold on the web. The justification for using JavaScript for server/desktop/mobile applications seems to essentially be that a certain large group of programmers only know JavaScript.

gjolund 10y ago
Agreed, Im so tired of being forced to write js.
contextfree 10y ago
I'm not sure. All the browser APIs will still use the JS object model. If we look at the situation on the JVM or CLR, it seems like languages specifically designed for those object models (even if adapted from other languages) have been more successful than attempts to directly port existing languages. e.g., Scala, Clojure, F# or Powershell vs. Jython, JRuby, C++/CLI or IronPython. My bet would be that languages specifically designed for the JS ecosystem (whether JS itself or something like CoffeeScript or TypeScript) will continue to be the most popular for writing most of an app, with some apps dropping down to C or C++ or Rust compiled to wasm for a subset of performance-critical code.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I'm sure there'll be a mix. But consider things like Opal (Ruby => javascript), and it seems like there's at least some people who very much want to be able to work in a single language, but for that language to not be javascript... I'm sure once webassembly is ready, that'll at least get more popular.
Udik 10y ago
I guess you tend to reuse the technologies you're familiar with, especially when they are very well proven for solving a very complicated problem that requires a lot of expertise (I'm talking about fancy UIs, of course). Which is also why I think the emphasis on JS is wrong: the main selling point of these technologies is NOT javascript, is HTML5/ CSS. Javascript is just a (very handy indeed) scripting language like any other: frankly the logic and requirements of most applications around are not complex enough to justify the usage of anything more solid or complicated than that. Just today I was contacted by a former colleague, a Java developer, asking advice on using Electron to develop a quick desktop application. On the other hand, there is a long list of languages that transpile to javascript. So where are the masses of serious C#/ Java/ <pick-your-language> developers using transpilers to write the logic of their web applications?
- n00b101 10y ago
  So where are the masses of serious C#/ Java/ <pick-your-language> developers using transpilers to write the logic of their web applications? I think it is catching on with C++ game developers, who want to be able to run the same codebase natively or in the web browser. The Unity 3D game engine has built-in support for this using WebGL, for example. I don't know if CLR or JVM languages have been successfully transpiled to the browser using asm.js / WebAssembly (it wouldn't be very efficient at all, so I doubt that will ever be popular).

by n00b101 10y ago

gjolund 10y ago

Agreed, Im so tired of being forced to write js.

contextfree 10y ago

I'm not sure. All the browser APIs will still use the JS object model. If we look at the situation on the JVM or CLR, it seems like languages specifically designed for those object models (even if adapted from other languages) have been more successful than attempts to directly port existing languages. e.g., Scala, Clojure, F# or Powershell vs. Jython, JRuby, C++/CLI or IronPython. My bet would be that languages specifically designed for the JS ecosystem (whether JS itself or something like CoffeeScript or TypeScript) will continue to be the most popular for writing most of an app, with some apps dropping down to C or C++ or Rust compiled to wasm for a subset of performance-critical code.

vidarh 10y ago
I'm sure there'll be a mix. But consider things like Opal (Ruby => javascript), and it seems like there's at least some people who very much want to be able to work in a single language, but for that language to not be javascript... I'm sure once webassembly is ready, that'll at least get more popular.

Udik 10y ago

I guess you tend to reuse the technologies you're familiar with, especially when they are very well proven for solving a very complicated problem that requires a lot of expertise (I'm talking about fancy UIs, of course). Which is also why I think the emphasis on JS is wrong: the main selling point of these technologies is NOT javascript, is HTML5/ CSS. Javascript is just a (very handy indeed) scripting language like any other: frankly the logic and requirements of most applications around are not complex enough to justify the usage of anything more solid or complicated than that. Just today I was contacted by a former colleague, a Java developer, asking advice on using Electron to develop a quick desktop application. On the other hand, there is a long list of languages that transpile to javascript. So where are the masses of serious C#/ Java/ <pick-your-language> developers using transpilers to write the logic of their web applications?

n00b101 10y ago
So where are the masses of serious C#/ Java/ <pick-your-language> developers using transpilers to write the logic of their web applications? I think it is catching on with C++ game developers, who want to be able to run the same codebase natively or in the web browser. The Unity 3D game engine has built-in support for this using WebGL, for example. I don't know if CLR or JVM languages have been successfully transpiled to the browser using asm.js / WebAssembly (it wouldn't be very efficient at all, so I doubt that will ever be popular).