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JS is the only language integrated into the browser and the DOM. Netscape rejected other languages (Python, Perl, TCL) because of syntax, so Brendan Eich disgui

by qznc 10y ago

JS is the only language integrated into the browser and the DOM. Netscape rejected other languages (Python, Perl, TCL) because of syntax, so Brendan Eich disguised Scheme into Java syntax and hacked up a prototype in 10 days. Today, Javascript is sooo interwoven with the DOM in browsers that it is near impossible to separate them. Google planned to do this for Dart, but gave up. If they had done this and other browser vendors had followed, adding a third and forth and more languages would have been (relatively) easy, because the abstraction were in place. Then we would have seen a healthy competition. There is asm.js. Maybe we will get a "web bytecode" at some point, but that will easily take a decade and more. The pressure is increasing, because our CPUs don't get exponentially more powerful anymore. And delivering apps via the web is still going strong.

mook 10y ago
There were noon-JS languages on the web, though; in particular, VBScript was a thing in the (at the time) most popular browser. I understand that at one point there was a third-party Perl implementation too. Unfortunately there wasn't a good way for the other browsers to implement it. Or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view…
BrendanEich 10y ago
1. WebKit rejected adding barriers to support multiple garbage collectors and a super-GC to collect cycles, required by Dart or any 2nd VM. See https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2011-December/018811.html https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2011-December/... where Fil Pizlo of Apple cites 5% throughput regression. Dart was never going to make it, and adding 3 or 4 VMs with their own GCs is even less plausible. 2. See https://github.com/WebAssembly https://github.com/WebAssembly for progress on what asm.js showed was possible: a 2nd, initially co-expressive with asm.js, eventually more expressive, binary syntax for the Web. It's happening now, this year and probably shipping experimentally in 1Q2017. Writing "easily take a decade" out of ignorance just says to me you didn't even bother to use google!
- BrendanEich 10y ago
  And now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838335

by qznc 10y ago

mook 10y ago

There were noon-JS languages on the web, though; in particular, VBScript was a thing in the (at the time) most popular browser. I understand that at one point there was a third-party Perl implementation too. Unfortunately there wasn't a good way for the other browsers to implement it. Or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view…

BrendanEich 10y ago

1. WebKit rejected adding barriers to support multiple garbage collectors and a super-GC to collect cycles, required by Dart or any 2nd VM. See https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2011-December/018811.html https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2011-December/... where Fil Pizlo of Apple cites 5% throughput regression. Dart was never going to make it, and adding 3 or 4 VMs with their own GCs is even less plausible. 2. See https://github.com/WebAssembly https://github.com/WebAssembly for progress on what asm.js showed was possible: a 2nd, initially co-expressive with asm.js, eventually more expressive, binary syntax for the Web. It's happening now, this year and probably shipping experimentally in 1Q2017. Writing "easily take a decade" out of ignorance just says to me you didn't even bother to use google!

BrendanEich 10y ago
And now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838335