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> I thought over the last decade we let other languages into the browser Not so much! Rhino was an effort to rewrite Netscape Navigator in Java, and I expect t
by LinguaBrowse 1y ago
> I thought over the last decade we let other languages into the browser
Not so much! Rhino was an effort to rewrite Netscape Navigator in Java, and I expect that if that rewrite had taken off, Java might've gained a foothold (though indeed, there were Java applets for a time).
There were also Flash apps, and of course there are some significant games based on WebAssembly and low-level graphics APIs.
But ultimately JavaScript works well for GUI because it is so dynamic, allowing you to be less rigid in how you architect things. And by being a scripting language, it's super quick to iterate on.
- righthand 1y agoI was being sarcastic in my post. I find bragging about Javascript as a flourishing UI language omitting quite a bit about why.
- LinguaBrowse 1y agoEh, writing is hard!
- righthand 1y agoAnd how!
- breve 1y ago> JavaScript works well for GUI because it is so dynamic Amazon moved to WebAssembly for their Prime Video application for both higher and less variable performance: https://www.amazon.science/blog/how-prime-video-updates-its-app-for-more-than-8-000-device-types https://www.amazon.science/blog/how-prime-video-updates-its-... https://www.infoq.com/presentations/prime-video-rust/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/prime-video-rust/
- hajile 1y agoJava was never going to replace JS in a practical way because of security and the Java JIT taking forever to load and warm up.