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> The web needs a standard Intermediate Language: a machine code. Definitely. > This is what Javascript is becoming and it isn't well designed for it. Maybe.

by ra 15y ago

> The web needs a standard Intermediate Language: a machine code. Definitely. > This is what Javascript is becoming and it isn't well designed for it. Maybe... but what does a bytecode layer provide? I wonder if something useful couldn't be written in JS that provides a thin service layer. I agree it's not ideal, but it's what we've got. Google already have a few to-javascript compilers, including one for Dart... I expect they're already all over this.

sambeau 15y ago
The point is not that they are already all over this but rather that an IL is something that all the browser makers could get behind. If Javascript is good enough as an IL why does Dart bypass it in Chrome?
- ra 15y ago
  > The point is ... that an IL is something that all the browser makers could get behind. Sure, but that's not going to happen in the next decade unless that IL is in Javascript.
  - sambeau 15y ago
    If they built an IL that can also be implemented in Javascript they might have a chance. e.g: Javascript → IL → Javascript
    - ra 15y ago
      Yes, that's what I said!
      - sambeau 15y ago
        Sorry, I must have missed the word 'in'.
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  > If Javascript is good enough as an IL why does Dart > bypass it in Chrome? Because they decided that it was easier to make up a new language than improve the V8 implementation of ECMAScript, as far as I can tell. And at least locally, for Google, that may be true. Whether it's true for the web as a whole is unclear. Other ECMAScript implementors seem to think that V8 is not nearly as fast as an ES implementation could be and are working on proving their claims with actual running code...