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This is a huge win for developer choice on one front -- choice of client language. Now you can use pretty much any language you want to write your client logic

by cyrus_ 15y ago

This is a huge win for developer choice on one front -- choice of client language. Now you can use pretty much any language you want to write your client logic as long as a suitable binding to the DOM via the Pepper API has been developed. Not to mention the ability to write truly performant code (V8 is nice and all but you can't beat native code in tight loops -- media manipulation apps like Photoshop come to mind.) Mono 2.10 already ships with support for NaCl, so you can already use a whole bunch of nice languages over the CLI that way. It'll be interesting to see where this takes the Moonlight project though, since it has similar goals. With Microsoft seemingly downplaying or abandoning Silverlight, so is this the end of the line?

hencq 15y ago
Mono with support for NaCL sounds interesting. Does that mean though the browser will have to download Mono every time it encounters a web app that's written in e.g. C#? Or will it only have to download the C# bytecode? On a slight tangent, I've always wondered why Java (or other JVM languages) couldn't make a comeback on the client side. Instead of having Applets that run sort of isolated from the browser, you could just expose the DOM.
- nikcub 15y ago
  You could host Mono once at a single URL and then include it. It will be cached by the browser just like any other resource. Unlike javascript libraries, there will be more of an incentive to use a single CDN/hosting point, since the package is likely to be a bit larger
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Presumably it would be a stripped down version of Mono. The .NET Micro Framework is about 300k, for example.
- cyrus_ 15y ago
  On your second question, they've tried that with things like JavaFX Script. Not sure why there isn't uptake.
bzbarsky 15y ago
> but you can't beat native code in tight loops But you can. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=618692#c1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=618692#c1 has a simple example where Java beats gcc -O3 by a factor of 1.5 or so on exactly such a loop. This is not an isolated case, and I fully expect JS JITs to get there for many situations. Unless browsers stop improving them, of course.

by cyrus_ 15y ago

hencq 15y ago

Mono with support for NaCL sounds interesting. Does that mean though the browser will have to download Mono every time it encounters a web app that's written in e.g. C#? Or will it only have to download the C# bytecode? On a slight tangent, I've always wondered why Java (or other JVM languages) couldn't make a comeback on the client side. Instead of having Applets that run sort of isolated from the browser, you could just expose the DOM.

nikcub 15y ago
You could host Mono once at a single URL and then include it. It will be cached by the browser just like any other resource. Unlike javascript libraries, there will be more of an incentive to use a single CDN/hosting point, since the package is likely to be a bit larger
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Presumably it would be a stripped down version of Mono. The .NET Micro Framework is about 300k, for example.
cyrus_ 15y ago
On your second question, they've tried that with things like JavaFX Script. Not sure why there isn't uptake.

bzbarsky 15y ago

> but you can't beat native code in tight loops But you can. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=618692#c1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=618692#c1 has a simple example where Java beats gcc -O3 by a factor of 1.5 or so on exactly such a loop. This is not an isolated case, and I fully expect JS JITs to get there for many situations. Unless browsers stop improving them, of course.