> I think you're focusing on the costs and neglecting many of the benefits. Which of those costs actually enabled the benefits? Very few, I'd wager. Much of th

> I think you're focusing on the costs and neglecting many of the benefits. Which of those costs actually enabled the benefits? Very few, I'd wager. Much of those were avoidable. Or would have been if the market wasn't so short sighted. > GitHub, JavaScript 30, Khan Academy, RunKit, Flexbox Defense, Codecademy I reckon some of this does require a scripting engine somewhere. But not all of it. I still believe your examples are possible without JavaScript (even without CSS). A REPL wouldn't need it, if you have the server do the computation (within limits to prevents DOS attacks). It just wouldn't be as pretty. But that would be unwise. Many of those really are applications, and they deserve a proper application platform. Which the web isn't, despite herculean efforts to the contrary. A proper application platform needs to give access to simple, relatively low level constructs. Something like web assembly, a raster viewport, input, and sound. Meaning, a virtual machine. Browsers are becoming such anyway. Also, no text handling, no style sheet, no programming language. Let the users implement a web browser on top of the application platform if they really want to. Actually, I do hope we eventually turn this madness on its head, and implement browsers on top of web assembly engines. This would drastically reduce the effective attack surface (good for security), and do wonders for portability. Wouldn't solve the independence problem, though.