6 ms·

As an ex-MSFT person, this doc sounds like a Microsoft doc more than something you would see from Google. And I'm amazed at sentences like these - can you imag

by sriramk 15y ago

As an ex-MSFT person, this doc sounds like a Microsoft doc more than something you would see from Google. And I'm amazed at sentences like these - can you imagine MSFT saying this and getting away with it? "The goal of the Dash effort is ultimately to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development" and "What will Google developers be using? We will strongly encourage Google developers start off targeting Chrome-only whenever possible as this gives us the best end user experience."

true_religion 15y ago
You can say whatever you want until you've squandered the public good will, and then the public will skeptically peruse even the most innocuous of words coming from your mouth. People's skepticism of Microsoft is based on what they (MS) have done in the past.
deno 15y ago
And also: ”Developers using Dash tooling will be able to use a cross-compiler to target Javascript for browsers that do not support Dash natively.” Not very different to having native support for e.g. CoffeScript in browser X and supporting other browsers via JS. Of course the main issue is that this is yet another language. Since all browsers are essentially becoming poor man’s virtual machines, why not drop the pretense and adapt some kind of bytecode instead. There’s JVM/CLR/LLVM/NaCL — just pick one already! Alas, politics (Oracle/Microsoft/Apple/Google). Well anyway, Dash is a very positive news nevertheless. The biggest issue with current cross-compilers (GWT, Pyjamas, Haxe etc.) is that they lack good tools to develop and debug. Having support for those natively, there’s hardly any reason to target JS directly anymore. And once Chromium has the infrastructure to support more than one language, it’s possible that the abstractions will be general enough to add support for other languages as well. “Our approach is to make an absolutely fantastic VM/Language and development environment and build great apps that fully leverage it in order to help other browsers see the wisdom in following. Once Dash has had a chance to prove its stability and feasibility, we are committed to making Dash an open standard with involvement from the broader web community.”
- wahnfrieden 15y ago
  NaCl is LLVM, bby the way. Portable NaCl is really cool though - it's an intermediary LLVM bytecode that's cross platform.
  - sp332 15y ago
    The next version of NaCl, called PNaCl, will be LLVM. Right now it's all native code (x86, x64, or ARM).
    - nxn 15y ago
      Just wondering, how do you know it's going to be the next version?
      - sp332 15y ago
        It's already under development. Here's the (perhaps optimistic) roadmap: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/release-roadmap http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/release-roadmap
- leoc 15y ago
  Mainly browser-vendor politics - MS/Apple/Opera/Mozilla. A proper runtime would weaken their chokehold over the Web client. It's almost certainly not a coincidence that the one major browser vendor which does support a VM is the one which is mainly interested in the Web client as a platform for its applications. Of the other four, two have strong interests in holding back the Web as an alternative to OS-native applications, while the remaining two are more or less nothing without their position of power over Web standards.
  - ootachi 15y ago
    I can't figure out what you're implying. Why would the two organizations that are "more or less nothing without their position of power over Web standards" be opposed to making the Web better able to compete with native apps? After all, if the Web loses to iOS and Android, then Opera and Mozilla become irrelevant. The reason why Opera and Mozilla oppose bytecode standards is that they genuinely think they're a bad idea. I mean, we tried that once; it was called Java. It lost to JavaScript.
azakai 15y ago
Indeed. Especially worrying for me was this phrase which appeared a few times: > Developers who can focus solely on Chrome can [..] Developers focusing on all browsers will have to [..] This seems to imply that Chrome is the preferable target: If developers can focus soley on Chrome, they should. Or if they must target all browsers, which is less desirable in the viewpoint here, then there is some tier-two option. Scary stuff for anyone who cares about the open web.
- deno 15y ago
  They mean that you can use Chromium as your primary target — your development stack — and their cross-compiler will take care of supporting legacy/incompatible targets. This is just like GWT does now and it seems the technology (apart from VM, grammar and debugger) will build on the existing codebase of GWT and the Closure compiler. > What happened to JSPrime? > The JSPrime effort was begun to unify and be a (single!) successor to GWT and Closure/JSCompiler, suitable for large-scale development inside and outside Google, including being amenable to IDE-like tools and static compiler optimizations. The JSPrime team is happily folding its efforts into Dash now that everyone agrees Dash will explicitly include the same goals.
- ryanisinallofus 15y ago
  Don't be ridiculous. The entire spec is to be open source. This is nothing like Internet Explorer. If Internet Explorer played this nice when it wanted to innovate (AJAX) from the beginning it would probably still be relevant. Is Mozilla the only corporation allowed to create new web features now? This backwards compatible approach isn't exactly Google's idea and it's a good one. Having a backwards compatible, faster, and more sane web language is going to improve developing the open web. Why should anyone be scared?
  - ootachi 15y ago
    This is exactly as open as Android. The language is developed entirely in secret, and code is dumped into a repository on the day of a big announcement. Google's preferred partners (in this case, Chrome) get to see the source before the public does. Quibbling about whether this qualifies as "open" or not is arguing semantics, but I think recent history has shown that the Android model doesn't lead to the openness that its proponents had suggested it would.
zlapper 15y ago
From the Executive Summary: "Push for Dash to become an open standard and be adopted by other browsers." I think the "Don't be evil" factor is well represented on that sentence.
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  It's clear that adoption by other browsers is a prerequisite for really being able to use this, unless Chrome manages to corner the browser market. It's clear that other browsers won't adopt something like this without an open standard. So this is not "don't be evil" but simple pragmatics. "Don't be evil" would involve doing something other than presenting a fait accompli to a standards body and asking for a rubberstamp.
- j-kidd 15y ago
  > Lars has promised to “sweet talk” the other browser vendors Sweet talking is no evil!
mlinksva 15y ago
"cyclone of innovation"? Sigh. But it seems like an attempt to supersede JS with something significantly better before JS becomes further entrenched as the dominant language for nearly everything (slight exaggeration of what lots of people are saying) is worthwhile. I wonder what Google's internal prediction markets (if they still have those) says about chances of success.
aaronbrethorst 15y ago
Didn't you see Brad Abrams' name on that list? After all, the more things change... And yeah, I agree: it felt exactly like reading an internal MS memo...but ballsier.
- larsberg 15y ago
  And Peter Hallam, original J#/C# compiler dev lead, IIRC. It's like an ex-MSFT .NET party over there!
  - aaronbrethorst 15y ago
    I did not know that. Hilarious :)
jroseattle 15y ago
I can't believe any self-respecting dev would ever use the term "lingua franca".
- covariance 15y ago
  America fuck yeah! Literacy is for faggots!
  - jroseattle 15y ago
    Don't try to associate literacy with douchebaggery.

by sriramk 15y ago

true_religion 15y ago

You can say whatever you want until you've squandered the public good will, and then the public will skeptically peruse even the most innocuous of words coming from your mouth. People's skepticism of Microsoft is based on what they (MS) have done in the past.

deno 15y ago

And also: ”Developers using Dash tooling will be able to use a cross-compiler to target Javascript for browsers that do not support Dash natively.” Not very different to having native support for e.g. CoffeScript in browser X and supporting other browsers via JS. Of course the main issue is that this is yet another language. Since all browsers are essentially becoming poor man’s virtual machines, why not drop the pretense and adapt some kind of bytecode instead. There’s JVM/CLR/LLVM/NaCL — just pick one already! Alas, politics (Oracle/Microsoft/Apple/Google). Well anyway, Dash is a very positive news nevertheless. The biggest issue with current cross-compilers (GWT, Pyjamas, Haxe etc.) is that they lack good tools to develop and debug. Having support for those natively, there’s hardly any reason to target JS directly anymore. And once Chromium has the infrastructure to support more than one language, it’s possible that the abstractions will be general enough to add support for other languages as well. “Our approach is to make an absolutely fantastic VM/Language and development environment and build great apps that fully leverage it in order to help other browsers see the wisdom in following. Once Dash has had a chance to prove its stability and feasibility, we are committed to making Dash an open standard with involvement from the broader web community.”

wahnfrieden 15y ago
NaCl is LLVM, bby the way. Portable NaCl is really cool though - it's an intermediary LLVM bytecode that's cross platform.
- sp332 15y ago
  The next version of NaCl, called PNaCl, will be LLVM. Right now it's all native code (x86, x64, or ARM).
  - nxn 15y ago
    Just wondering, how do you know it's going to be the next version?
    - sp332 15y ago
      It's already under development. Here's the (perhaps optimistic) roadmap: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/release-roadmap http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/release-roadmap
leoc 15y ago
Mainly browser-vendor politics - MS/Apple/Opera/Mozilla. A proper runtime would weaken their chokehold over the Web client. It's almost certainly not a coincidence that the one major browser vendor which does support a VM is the one which is mainly interested in the Web client as a platform for its applications. Of the other four, two have strong interests in holding back the Web as an alternative to OS-native applications, while the remaining two are more or less nothing without their position of power over Web standards.
- ootachi 15y ago
  I can't figure out what you're implying. Why would the two organizations that are "more or less nothing without their position of power over Web standards" be opposed to making the Web better able to compete with native apps? After all, if the Web loses to iOS and Android, then Opera and Mozilla become irrelevant. The reason why Opera and Mozilla oppose bytecode standards is that they genuinely think they're a bad idea. I mean, we tried that once; it was called Java. It lost to JavaScript.

azakai 15y ago

Indeed. Especially worrying for me was this phrase which appeared a few times: > Developers who can focus solely on Chrome can [..] Developers focusing on all browsers will have to [..] This seems to imply that Chrome is the preferable target: If developers can focus soley on Chrome, they should. Or if they must target all browsers, which is less desirable in the viewpoint here, then there is some tier-two option. Scary stuff for anyone who cares about the open web.

deno 15y ago
They mean that you can use Chromium as your primary target — your development stack — and their cross-compiler will take care of supporting legacy/incompatible targets. This is just like GWT does now and it seems the technology (apart from VM, grammar and debugger) will build on the existing codebase of GWT and the Closure compiler. > What happened to JSPrime? > The JSPrime effort was begun to unify and be a (single!) successor to GWT and Closure/JSCompiler, suitable for large-scale development inside and outside Google, including being amenable to IDE-like tools and static compiler optimizations. The JSPrime team is happily folding its efforts into Dash now that everyone agrees Dash will explicitly include the same goals.
ryanisinallofus 15y ago
Don't be ridiculous. The entire spec is to be open source. This is nothing like Internet Explorer. If Internet Explorer played this nice when it wanted to innovate (AJAX) from the beginning it would probably still be relevant. Is Mozilla the only corporation allowed to create new web features now? This backwards compatible approach isn't exactly Google's idea and it's a good one. Having a backwards compatible, faster, and more sane web language is going to improve developing the open web. Why should anyone be scared?
- ootachi 15y ago
  This is exactly as open as Android. The language is developed entirely in secret, and code is dumped into a repository on the day of a big announcement. Google's preferred partners (in this case, Chrome) get to see the source before the public does. Quibbling about whether this qualifies as "open" or not is arguing semantics, but I think recent history has shown that the Android model doesn't lead to the openness that its proponents had suggested it would.

zlapper 15y ago

From the Executive Summary: "Push for Dash to become an open standard and be adopted by other browsers." I think the "Don't be evil" factor is well represented on that sentence.

bzbarsky 15y ago
It's clear that adoption by other browsers is a prerequisite for really being able to use this, unless Chrome manages to corner the browser market. It's clear that other browsers won't adopt something like this without an open standard. So this is not "don't be evil" but simple pragmatics. "Don't be evil" would involve doing something other than presenting a fait accompli to a standards body and asking for a rubberstamp.
j-kidd 15y ago
> Lars has promised to “sweet talk” the other browser vendors Sweet talking is no evil!

mlinksva 15y ago

"cyclone of innovation"? Sigh. But it seems like an attempt to supersede JS with something significantly better before JS becomes further entrenched as the dominant language for nearly everything (slight exaggeration of what lots of people are saying) is worthwhile. I wonder what Google's internal prediction markets (if they still have those) says about chances of success.

aaronbrethorst 15y ago

Didn't you see Brad Abrams' name on that list? After all, the more things change... And yeah, I agree: it felt exactly like reading an internal MS memo...but ballsier.

larsberg 15y ago
And Peter Hallam, original J#/C# compiler dev lead, IIRC. It's like an ex-MSFT .NET party over there!
- aaronbrethorst 15y ago
  I did not know that. Hilarious :)

jroseattle 15y ago

I can't believe any self-respecting dev would ever use the term "lingua franca".

covariance 15y ago
America fuck yeah! Literacy is for faggots!
- jroseattle 15y ago
  Don't try to associate literacy with douchebaggery.