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You certainly aren't going to run any Javascript on an ancient 580 MHz MIPS CPU with 128MB of RAM. So that is a completely bogus argument.

by janoc 3y ago

dragontamer 3y ago
I've literally run Javascript on smaller processors than that on college projects. Smaller scale Javascript (probably not the latest DOM or EMCAscript), but... yeah. Its not actually that large of a language. Especially older versions. It helps that I did this back in 2008 as part of my college education when processors were smaller (and Javascript was smaller), but Javascript goes back to the early 90s in practice. There's surely some version applicable for this use case. You know that OSes and extendable, multi-process systems were around in the 80s right? On 640kB of RAM and 20MHz processors right? ----------- Anyway, my point is that code-extensibility is absolutely a thing. Some devices do deserve 3rd party code. I admit, none of my projects right now, though I'm hobby level. But I can _imagine_ a use of a standard OS with extendable 3rd party code modules where an API with the hardware would be helpful. If you wanna implement Forth, VxWorks, custom Javascript or whatever... there's plenty of valid solutions. But you know what else is a perfectly fine, and probably the easiest, solution? Straight Linux. Maybe FreeDOS or Dr. DOS as well.
rkeene2 3y ago
That's significantly more powerful than workstations I used for a long time, where I ran Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, DOS, OS/2, and Windows. Excluding really small machines that didn't do well with multitasking, I used a 486 DX2 50MHz with 8MiB of RAM (this was a Packard-Bell) to my day-to-day work until around 2002, this includes running browsers that supported JavaScript. It could even decode and play MP3s if that's the only thing it was dedicated to doing. After that I upgraded to an HP Visualize C3000 (400MHz, 512MiB RAM) desktop running HP-UX and an HP Pavilion 6350 (475MHz, 128MiB RAM) laptop running Linux. Both of these supported a GUI much better than the 50MHz, and also could run more intensive JavaScript workloads. I have a few screenshots [0] from the HP Pavilion, you can see it's running several browsers and decoding an MP3 at the same time. [0] https://rkeene.org/personal/screenshot/Image_fvwm2-06Jul02-3.jpg.html https://rkeene.org/personal/screenshot/Image_fvwm2-06Jul02-3...
- helf 3y ago
  [dead]
imtringued 3y ago
People run Javascript on microcontrollers and you think such an overpowered (compared to microcontrollers) processor can't do it? People used to run Java J2ME of all things on phones with 512 KiB of RAM.

You certainly aren't going to run any Javascript on an ancient 580 MHz MIPS CPU with 128MB of RAM. So that is a completely bogus argument.

by janoc 3y ago

You certainly aren't going to run any Javascript on an ancient 580 MHz MIPS CPU with 128MB of RAM. So that is a completely bogus argument.

dragontamer 3y ago

I've literally run Javascript on smaller processors than that on college projects. Smaller scale Javascript (probably not the latest DOM or EMCAscript), but... yeah. Its not actually that large of a language. Especially older versions. It helps that I did this back in 2008 as part of my college education when processors were smaller (and Javascript was smaller), but Javascript goes back to the early 90s in practice. There's surely some version applicable for this use case. You know that OSes and extendable, multi-process systems were around in the 80s right? On 640kB of RAM and 20MHz processors right? ----------- Anyway, my point is that code-extensibility is absolutely a thing. Some devices do deserve 3rd party code. I admit, none of my projects right now, though I'm hobby level. But I can _imagine_ a use of a standard OS with extendable 3rd party code modules where an API with the hardware would be helpful. If you wanna implement Forth, VxWorks, custom Javascript or whatever... there's plenty of valid solutions. But you know what else is a perfectly fine, and probably the easiest, solution? Straight Linux. Maybe FreeDOS or Dr. DOS as well.

rkeene2 3y ago

That's significantly more powerful than workstations I used for a long time, where I ran Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, DOS, OS/2, and Windows. Excluding really small machines that didn't do well with multitasking, I used a 486 DX2 50MHz with 8MiB of RAM (this was a Packard-Bell) to my day-to-day work until around 2002, this includes running browsers that supported JavaScript. It could even decode and play MP3s if that's the only thing it was dedicated to doing. After that I upgraded to an HP Visualize C3000 (400MHz, 512MiB RAM) desktop running HP-UX and an HP Pavilion 6350 (475MHz, 128MiB RAM) laptop running Linux. Both of these supported a GUI much better than the 50MHz, and also could run more intensive JavaScript workloads. I have a few screenshots [0] from the HP Pavilion, you can see it's running several browsers and decoding an MP3 at the same time. [0] https://rkeene.org/personal/screenshot/Image_fvwm2-06Jul02-3.jpg.html https://rkeene.org/personal/screenshot/Image_fvwm2-06Jul02-3...

helf 3y ago
[dead]

imtringued 3y ago

People run Javascript on microcontrollers and you think such an overpowered (compared to microcontrollers) processor can't do it? People used to run Java J2ME of all things on phones with 512 KiB of RAM.