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> I guess I'm just sad that the JavaScript+HTML community have been taken over by people who don't really seem to like JavaScript+HTML much. I'd always hoped t

> I guess I'm just sad that the JavaScript+HTML community have been taken over by people who don't really seem to like JavaScript+HTML much. I'd always hoped there would be a sensible way to incorporate other languages into the browser natively, like Python (I'm aware of things like Skulpt, but they're not Python Python, they're JS Python). It would make sense, given the ease of installing new languages on systems these days. However, I get that it would be a major PITA keeping all the languages synced up with all the development going on in the browser. Alas. Thus endeth my old man rant.

abritinthebay 10y ago
It would also be a security nightmare, which is one reason why browsers don't really bother.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
> I'd always hoped there would be a sensible way to incorporate other languages into the browser natively, like Python The funny thing is, I support the crap out of that. I'm really excited about Web Assembly, which seems like the path to that. See, that's a perfect example of how the web platform is supposed to evolve: It's a genuinely new feature that allows you to do things in the browser you couldn't do before. Shadow DOM is another example of a new tech that allows basic access to a fundamentally new power. It can't come soon enough. I'm not saying the web shouldn't evolve. I just think people who are trying to turn it into Ruby are not helping.
groovy2shoes 10y ago
Hopefully WebAssembly will help to alleviate this somewhat. Back in the day, JavaScript didn't have so much of a monopoly on, as we called it back then, "DHTML". IE could also do VBscript, and there was a way to do Tcl in various browsers, too. And with Flash, back in the ActionScript 2 days, you could use the vaporware-to-be ECMAscript 4, which was rather different from either ES3 or ES5, and, imo, it was a shame that it was abandoned. Java applets, Silverlight. These things wound up with a poor security record, but I think something like the PPAPI introduced with Chrome helps to mitigate that security risk by A LOT, since plugins are run in their own processes and sandboxed. While I'm trying to be optimistic about WebAssembly, I can't help but think that a PPAPI/PNaCl-based solution would be ideal, along with a better UX for installing and managing such plugins.

abritinthebay 10y ago

It would also be a security nightmare, which is one reason why browsers don't really bother.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

> I'd always hoped there would be a sensible way to incorporate other languages into the browser natively, like Python The funny thing is, I support the crap out of that. I'm really excited about Web Assembly, which seems like the path to that. See, that's a perfect example of how the web platform is supposed to evolve: It's a genuinely new feature that allows you to do things in the browser you couldn't do before. Shadow DOM is another example of a new tech that allows basic access to a fundamentally new power. It can't come soon enough. I'm not saying the web shouldn't evolve. I just think people who are trying to turn it into Ruby are not helping.

groovy2shoes 10y ago

Hopefully WebAssembly will help to alleviate this somewhat. Back in the day, JavaScript didn't have so much of a monopoly on, as we called it back then, "DHTML". IE could also do VBscript, and there was a way to do Tcl in various browsers, too. And with Flash, back in the ActionScript 2 days, you could use the vaporware-to-be ECMAscript 4, which was rather different from either ES3 or ES5, and, imo, it was a shame that it was abandoned. Java applets, Silverlight. These things wound up with a poor security record, but I think something like the PPAPI introduced with Chrome helps to mitigate that security risk by A LOT, since plugins are run in their own processes and sandboxed. While I'm trying to be optimistic about WebAssembly, I can't help but think that a PPAPI/PNaCl-based solution would be ideal, along with a better UX for installing and managing such plugins.