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I believe there are other languages easier and more intuitive than JS. The lack of DOM and GC support in WASM is the only reason JS is still ruling the web. As

I believe there are other languages easier and more intuitive than JS. The lack of DOM and GC support in WASM is the only reason JS is still ruling the web. As far as the performance is concerned I believe profilling the internals of the VM(as the author does) is not a good fix on the long term.

FridgeSeal 9y ago
That and the fact that it's the only language blessed to have it's interpreter in the browser. If we could have been able to challenge it by allowing another language in there I would like to think we wouldn't be facing a lot of the issues we do now.
ShinTakuya 9y ago
I agree regarding JS not being the easiest or most intuitive language, but I don't see JS going away any time soon and I don't think that's a bad thing. The last 5 years or so have seen JS transform from one of the most frustrating languages to one of the better ones. I think Typescript is where the future of web dev lies. Typescript for your main logic and WASM for optimising the parts that need it.
- thefounder 9y ago
  Yeah, JS is better now but I bet we could do even better starting with a clean slate. Web dev shouldn't be tied to a single programming language. How would you like using PHP and its derivates(i.e. Hack) for everything web APIs/back-end? I could tell you that it made great progress since PHP 4.
  - ShinTakuya 9y ago
    Oh I'm sure we can do better. Would it be worth throwing away decades of libraries, many of which have ironed out many subtle logic bugs over time? That's a different argument. Not going to say it's not worth it (there is a lot of mess that could be removed if we started from scratch). It's the same argument any junior engineer makes when they start at a company with a legacy codebase. They always want to start from scratch but don't realise the cost or the fact that while they'll avoid 100 mistakes of the past, they'll also make 100 new ones. Why not just make JS better? It's already happening year by year.

FridgeSeal 9y ago

That and the fact that it's the only language blessed to have it's interpreter in the browser. If we could have been able to challenge it by allowing another language in there I would like to think we wouldn't be facing a lot of the issues we do now.

ShinTakuya 9y ago

I agree regarding JS not being the easiest or most intuitive language, but I don't see JS going away any time soon and I don't think that's a bad thing. The last 5 years or so have seen JS transform from one of the most frustrating languages to one of the better ones. I think Typescript is where the future of web dev lies. Typescript for your main logic and WASM for optimising the parts that need it.

thefounder 9y ago
Yeah, JS is better now but I bet we could do even better starting with a clean slate. Web dev shouldn't be tied to a single programming language. How would you like using PHP and its derivates(i.e. Hack) for everything web APIs/back-end? I could tell you that it made great progress since PHP 4.
- ShinTakuya 9y ago
  Oh I'm sure we can do better. Would it be worth throwing away decades of libraries, many of which have ironed out many subtle logic bugs over time? That's a different argument. Not going to say it's not worth it (there is a lot of mess that could be removed if we started from scratch). It's the same argument any junior engineer makes when they start at a company with a legacy codebase. They always want to start from scratch but don't realise the cost or the fact that while they'll avoid 100 mistakes of the past, they'll also make 100 new ones. Why not just make JS better? It's already happening year by year.