4 ms·

#2 is bad for users unless Chrome is shipping on all hardware and operating systems users use. In fact, that's the same reason any sort of web-related monopoly

#2 is bad for users unless Chrome is shipping on all hardware and operating systems users use. In fact, that's the same reason any sort of web-related monopoly is bad. Where's Chrome for PPC processors? Chrome for ARM (being worked on, but no there yet)? Chrome for whatever architecture or OS users might want tomorrow? The right comparison here in your success scenario may not be VBScript but ActiveX, except without the security issues ActiveX had. If ActiveX were required for use of gmail today, how would you feel about it? How would you have felt about it in 2002?

gruseom 15y ago
If ActiveX had been insanely great, not only would I feel fine about it, it would be ubiquitous by now.
- BrendanEich 15y ago
  Isn't "insanely great" a Steve Jobs phrase? I like Apple's hardware (modulo the fans running all the time on my latest dual-core i7 MBP), and some of its software (but WTF happened to Mail.app on Lion?). Still, "insanely great" didn't make Apple-only web tech ubiquitous. That took hard, open-standards spec-work in the CSS WG. And that, to the extent it happened with help from Apple, is the opposite of the Dart plan in the leaked memo. Stop worshipping i.g. It's never that great. Native apps on iOS use Objective-C, for crying out loud. Everyone's sh*t stinks. I.g. is no excuse for monopoly behavior. The greatness goes away, leaving only insanity.
  - m-k-s 15y ago
    Well said Brendan! Like I said in a tweet this morning, I know those Googlers know way more about JS than I do, but if they think as per the leaked mail) that devs are choosing iOS over browsers because of JS, they have their heads in the sand. Those choices are happening due to iOS as a platform not because devs are somehow so much more happier learning/using objective-C! The best thing that Google could do is to KEEP working hard on improving the browser platform like you guys are doing with B2G and they started to do with ChromeOS. For example, I'd love to hear from the ChromeOS team exactly what in JS is blocking them delivering all the kinds of APIs that B2G is promising to deliver. And on the server-side, some one should tell the hordes flocking to Nodejs that they are all wrong! As you pointed out, serverside everyone can choose to use whatever they want and given that choice, just look at everyone jumping on the Nodejs bandwagon. I'd love to see all those thousands of module that dev around the world have written in Go recently! (npmjs.org) maks.
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  So you would be OK with requiring everyone to use Windows as their operating system, in perpetuity? I think we have some fundamental philosophical differences about how the world should work. ;)
  - gruseom 15y ago
    "So you would be OK with requiring everyone to use Windows as their operating system, in perpetuity?" Of course I don't think that. I meant by "ubiquitous" to imply the opposite. I fear we're talking past each other. The risks of Google behaving like a Microsoft-style monopolist here are low because (a) they have no monopoly in browsers, VMs, or OSes to abuse, (b) their culture is the most hacker-driven of any large company, (c) their interests are aligned with what is good for the web, and (d) the industry has changed since the bad old days. Given this, and because the potential value of this project is so high, I'm willing to give them a chance. Since making my original post, I've read a bit more about Bracha and Newspeak. Assume for the time being that Dart is an evolution of this work. We're talking about a fast, small, even-more-dynamic Smalltalk augmented with ideas from Self and E, designed for the web and multicore. That's mind-blowing. Now throw in the implementation prowess of a Bak and the institutional support of a Google, and we're talking about something potentially game-changing. To judge by their track records (e.g. the Resilient embedded Smalltalk that Bak worked on), these guys are out to correct not only the mistakes of Javascript but of Java as well. Historic stuff, which they have as good a shot at pulling off as anybody ever has. I admit the odds are against it turning out so well. But this is the rare case where at least some optimism is well-grounded. If what they release does turn out to be an attempt at the above, it will be exciting.
    - BrendanEich 15y ago
      "Ubiquitous" ActiveX without Windows is a pipe dream, not a useful premise. Kind of like assuming world peace first, then resolving a lesser conflict. With ActiveX, the interfaces that might be used are too many, and their implementations too large and complicated, to have bug for bug compatibility. Even having source code would not be enough. All-paths testing would be needed. Someone could (and a few companies did, for COM on Unix) tediously reverse-engineer a subset of COM interfaces and components implementing them. No one ever pulled off anywhere near a full Windows workalike. The same threat arises with delayed-open-source controlled by a single proprietor. You can port and fork such code, but you can't depend on the single proprietor, especially if it's a hostile competitor. You'll have to co-maintain if you don't make a long-term fork of your own. Source != spec. An implementation will over-specify in its source code and API. Abstractions leak. Standards can and do turn down specificity by dropping to prose or more formal means, without overspecifying. "The risks of Google behaving like a Microsoft-style monopolist here are low because (a) they have no monopoly in browsers, VMs, or OSes to abuse," Look closer: Google is a search monopoly in many locales, and they are an emerging duopoly member (the larger share than Apple) on mobile, whose growth predicts it dominating desktop. "(b) their culture is the most hacker-driven of any large company" That was true a few years ago. It is much less so now. Larry has cut back on the thousand flowers, and focused on a few strategic bets: Android, Chrome, Google+, Search. "(c) their interests are aligned with what is good for the web," So you say (and perhaps Google people say this, but I know some who candidly admit it just ain't so any longer). Why do you believe this? As a public company, Google has to show quarterly good results, not just great profit margins but bubbly growth, to keep its stock appreciating, to retain and recruit (see the Facebook defection problem of last year). This is a big distortion on a pure open web mission. "and (d) the industry has changed since the bad old days." And human nature has changed since the 20th century, or the French Revolution, or the dark ages? Yeah, right.
nxn 15y ago
The ironic thing about this scenario of ActiveX being required by Gmail is that XHR sort of has its roots in ActiveX -- that is, before Mozilla and others had to replicate it to remain competitive.
- BrendanEich 15y ago
  We reverse-engineered XHR long before it became a big competitive deal, back in the pre-WHATWG XML daze. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp... XHR was a good idea. Even choicer irony: MS exposed it to JScript when they gave Java the boot, to keep Outlook Web Access working!
  - nxn 15y ago
    This is sort of what gets me confused: You say XHR was a good idea, and it's clear now that reverse engineering it and putting it into Mozilla's browser was a good move because it allowed that technology to advance the web -- but at the same time you are showing opposition to taking a similar course of action for a Dart VM because it's not an open standard. I understand the viewpoint that you would rather have had Google focused on improving JavaScript through Ecma TC39 than creating another language with absolutely no outside influence. I also admit that this is a pretty inconsiderate move for them to make, especially as that email made it sound as this new language aimed to be a "replacement" for JS. But despite the lack of good will behind this action, I would still hate to see something as rare as a new client side language, that has a decent potential of allowing developers to think differently about solving problems on the web, die off because no one wanted to adopt it.
    - BrendanEich 15y ago
      See my other reply on XHR. It is orders of magnitude simpler than Dart. Also, even though MS had monopoly power when they added XHR, they did not abuse it on the web. XHR was for OWA. Mozilla and Opera were not coerced by MS-inspired use of XHR on the web. We chose to implement (with some changes, see the wikipedia page) at leisure. In contrast, Dart usage in Google web properties targeting the native VM in Chrome, per the leaked memo, would pressure other browsers to adopt or reverse-engineer a much more complex non-standard.

gruseom 15y ago

If ActiveX had been insanely great, not only would I feel fine about it, it would be ubiquitous by now.

BrendanEich 15y ago
Isn't "insanely great" a Steve Jobs phrase? I like Apple's hardware (modulo the fans running all the time on my latest dual-core i7 MBP), and some of its software (but WTF happened to Mail.app on Lion?). Still, "insanely great" didn't make Apple-only web tech ubiquitous. That took hard, open-standards spec-work in the CSS WG. And that, to the extent it happened with help from Apple, is the opposite of the Dart plan in the leaked memo. Stop worshipping i.g. It's never that great. Native apps on iOS use Objective-C, for crying out loud. Everyone's sh*t stinks. I.g. is no excuse for monopoly behavior. The greatness goes away, leaving only insanity.
- m-k-s 15y ago
  Well said Brendan! Like I said in a tweet this morning, I know those Googlers know way more about JS than I do, but if they think as per the leaked mail) that devs are choosing iOS over browsers because of JS, they have their heads in the sand. Those choices are happening due to iOS as a platform not because devs are somehow so much more happier learning/using objective-C! The best thing that Google could do is to KEEP working hard on improving the browser platform like you guys are doing with B2G and they started to do with ChromeOS. For example, I'd love to hear from the ChromeOS team exactly what in JS is blocking them delivering all the kinds of APIs that B2G is promising to deliver. And on the server-side, some one should tell the hordes flocking to Nodejs that they are all wrong! As you pointed out, serverside everyone can choose to use whatever they want and given that choice, just look at everyone jumping on the Nodejs bandwagon. I'd love to see all those thousands of module that dev around the world have written in Go recently! (npmjs.org) maks.
bzbarsky 15y ago
So you would be OK with requiring everyone to use Windows as their operating system, in perpetuity? I think we have some fundamental philosophical differences about how the world should work. ;)
- gruseom 15y ago
  "So you would be OK with requiring everyone to use Windows as their operating system, in perpetuity?" Of course I don't think that. I meant by "ubiquitous" to imply the opposite. I fear we're talking past each other. The risks of Google behaving like a Microsoft-style monopolist here are low because (a) they have no monopoly in browsers, VMs, or OSes to abuse, (b) their culture is the most hacker-driven of any large company, (c) their interests are aligned with what is good for the web, and (d) the industry has changed since the bad old days. Given this, and because the potential value of this project is so high, I'm willing to give them a chance. Since making my original post, I've read a bit more about Bracha and Newspeak. Assume for the time being that Dart is an evolution of this work. We're talking about a fast, small, even-more-dynamic Smalltalk augmented with ideas from Self and E, designed for the web and multicore. That's mind-blowing. Now throw in the implementation prowess of a Bak and the institutional support of a Google, and we're talking about something potentially game-changing. To judge by their track records (e.g. the Resilient embedded Smalltalk that Bak worked on), these guys are out to correct not only the mistakes of Javascript but of Java as well. Historic stuff, which they have as good a shot at pulling off as anybody ever has. I admit the odds are against it turning out so well. But this is the rare case where at least some optimism is well-grounded. If what they release does turn out to be an attempt at the above, it will be exciting.
  - BrendanEich 15y ago
    "Ubiquitous" ActiveX without Windows is a pipe dream, not a useful premise. Kind of like assuming world peace first, then resolving a lesser conflict. With ActiveX, the interfaces that might be used are too many, and their implementations too large and complicated, to have bug for bug compatibility. Even having source code would not be enough. All-paths testing would be needed. Someone could (and a few companies did, for COM on Unix) tediously reverse-engineer a subset of COM interfaces and components implementing them. No one ever pulled off anywhere near a full Windows workalike. The same threat arises with delayed-open-source controlled by a single proprietor. You can port and fork such code, but you can't depend on the single proprietor, especially if it's a hostile competitor. You'll have to co-maintain if you don't make a long-term fork of your own. Source != spec. An implementation will over-specify in its source code and API. Abstractions leak. Standards can and do turn down specificity by dropping to prose or more formal means, without overspecifying. "The risks of Google behaving like a Microsoft-style monopolist here are low because (a) they have no monopoly in browsers, VMs, or OSes to abuse," Look closer: Google is a search monopoly in many locales, and they are an emerging duopoly member (the larger share than Apple) on mobile, whose growth predicts it dominating desktop. "(b) their culture is the most hacker-driven of any large company" That was true a few years ago. It is much less so now. Larry has cut back on the thousand flowers, and focused on a few strategic bets: Android, Chrome, Google+, Search. "(c) their interests are aligned with what is good for the web," So you say (and perhaps Google people say this, but I know some who candidly admit it just ain't so any longer). Why do you believe this? As a public company, Google has to show quarterly good results, not just great profit margins but bubbly growth, to keep its stock appreciating, to retain and recruit (see the Facebook defection problem of last year). This is a big distortion on a pure open web mission. "and (d) the industry has changed since the bad old days." And human nature has changed since the 20th century, or the French Revolution, or the dark ages? Yeah, right.

nxn 15y ago

The ironic thing about this scenario of ActiveX being required by Gmail is that XHR sort of has its roots in ActiveX -- that is, before Mozilla and others had to replicate it to remain competitive.

BrendanEich 15y ago
We reverse-engineered XHR long before it became a big competitive deal, back in the pre-WHATWG XML daze. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp... XHR was a good idea. Even choicer irony: MS exposed it to JScript when they gave Java the boot, to keep Outlook Web Access working!
- nxn 15y ago
  This is sort of what gets me confused: You say XHR was a good idea, and it's clear now that reverse engineering it and putting it into Mozilla's browser was a good move because it allowed that technology to advance the web -- but at the same time you are showing opposition to taking a similar course of action for a Dart VM because it's not an open standard. I understand the viewpoint that you would rather have had Google focused on improving JavaScript through Ecma TC39 than creating another language with absolutely no outside influence. I also admit that this is a pretty inconsiderate move for them to make, especially as that email made it sound as this new language aimed to be a "replacement" for JS. But despite the lack of good will behind this action, I would still hate to see something as rare as a new client side language, that has a decent potential of allowing developers to think differently about solving problems on the web, die off because no one wanted to adopt it.
  - BrendanEich 15y ago
    See my other reply on XHR. It is orders of magnitude simpler than Dart. Also, even though MS had monopoly power when they added XHR, they did not abuse it on the web. XHR was for OWA. Mozilla and Opera were not coerced by MS-inspired use of XHR on the web. We chose to implement (with some changes, see the wikipedia page) at leisure. In contrast, Dart usage in Google web properties targeting the native VM in Chrome, per the leaked memo, would pressure other browsers to adopt or reverse-engineer a much more complex non-standard.