4 ms·

Honest question - what can you do with bytecode that you can't do with javascript? Modern javascript is fast and ubiquitous and is clearly not going away anytim

• olavk 14y ago
  Some features typical of VM languages, like "goto" makes it more appropriate as a compilation target, because lots of higher-level control structures kan be compiled to gotos. Of course goto could also be added to the JavaScript language as is, but then we have a conflict since goto is nice in a low-level language, but discouraged in higher level languages. This conflict of interest in language design does not exist when the user language is seperate from the VM-language. I agree with your point though.
  • pcwalton 14y ago
    The Relooper is good enough that the lack of goto isn't an issue in a practical sense these days.
    • politician 14y ago
      The Emscripten Relooper algorithm "takes basic blocks of code - chunks of simple code, at the end of which are branches to other blocks of code - and generates high-level structure from that using loops and ifs." http://mozakai.blogspot.com/2012/05/reloop-all-blocks.html http://mozakai.blogspot.com/2012/05/reloop-all-blocks.html
      • pcwalton 14y ago
        That's my point. The Relooper does a good job with vast majority of code that you might conceivably want to compile to JS, making the lack of goto not a problem in a practical sense for these compilers.
        • politician 14y ago
          Hah, sorry, I didn't know what Relooper did, so I posted a comment describing where to find out about it for other people.