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Serious questions: 1. Why don't browsers execute (interpret?) languages other than JavaScript? 2. What would be involved in having a browser execute (interpre

Serious questions: 1. Why don't browsers execute (interpret?) languages other than JavaScript? 2. What would be involved in having a browser execute (interpret?) other languages, such as Perl or Python?

krapp 8y ago
>1. Why don't browsers execute (interpret?) languages other than JavaScript? I believe the general idea was that they would, because the "type" attribute in the <script> tag didn't need to be "text/javascript", but javascript happened to win because it was supported by Netscape Navigator. Microsoft had VBScript, but that was an IE only product, while both browsers supported javascript, making it the only choice for cross-browser compatible scripting (albeit with lots of irritating hacks, but then jQuery came along.) See this decent StackExchange thread here[0]. Then HTML5 deprecated the type attribute from the script tag because there really was no point anymore. Why support other languages when one language was adequate and already ubiquitous? >2. What would be involved in having a browser execute (interpret?) other languages, such as Perl or Python? Today? Browsers could ship with support for those languages (the way Chrome did with Dart) but of course, that would fragment the web unless all browsers supported all options. Or maybe plugins. Or "compiling to javascript." Or Webassembly[1]. I 100% believe that seamless, dynamic language support through WASM is going to be a thing eventually. [0]https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28947/how-did-javascript-become-popular https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2894... [1]https://github.com/mbasso/awesome-wasm#languages https://github.com/mbasso/awesome-wasm#languages
- TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
  Chrome never shipped Dart support. There was a modified version of Chromium with Dart support called Dartium, but it was discontinued with Dart 2.x.
rascul 8y ago
There's a plugin to run TCL in the browser [0]. Last update appears to be 2006 though, so I doubt it's usable on today's browsers. There was an effort at one time to implement a Dart VM in Chrome [1]. That has been stopped, though [2]. [0] https://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/ https://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/ [1] http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/10/dart-language-for-structured-web.html http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/10/dart-language-for-str... [2] https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html

krapp 8y ago

>1. Why don't browsers execute (interpret?) languages other than JavaScript? I believe the general idea was that they would, because the "type" attribute in the <script> tag didn't need to be "text/javascript", but javascript happened to win because it was supported by Netscape Navigator. Microsoft had VBScript, but that was an IE only product, while both browsers supported javascript, making it the only choice for cross-browser compatible scripting (albeit with lots of irritating hacks, but then jQuery came along.) See this decent StackExchange thread here[0]. Then HTML5 deprecated the type attribute from the script tag because there really was no point anymore. Why support other languages when one language was adequate and already ubiquitous? >2. What would be involved in having a browser execute (interpret?) other languages, such as Perl or Python? Today? Browsers could ship with support for those languages (the way Chrome did with Dart) but of course, that would fragment the web unless all browsers supported all options. Or maybe plugins. Or "compiling to javascript." Or Webassembly[1]. I 100% believe that seamless, dynamic language support through WASM is going to be a thing eventually. [0]https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28947/how-did-javascript-become-popular https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2894... [1]https://github.com/mbasso/awesome-wasm#languages https://github.com/mbasso/awesome-wasm#languages

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
Chrome never shipped Dart support. There was a modified version of Chromium with Dart support called Dartium, but it was discontinued with Dart 2.x.

rascul 8y ago

There's a plugin to run TCL in the browser [0]. Last update appears to be 2006 though, so I doubt it's usable on today's browsers. There was an effort at one time to implement a Dart VM in Chrome [1]. That has been stopped, though [2]. [0] https://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/ https://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/ [1] http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/10/dart-language-for-structured-web.html http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/10/dart-language-for-str... [2] https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html