4 ms·

Someone has to break it at some point. Making it live longer is not serving us any good. We would still be using primarily ALGOL, COBOL and Fortran 68 with this

• chc 14y ago
  I agree that someone has to break it someday, but that's similar to how someday I'll buy a house — that doesn't mean I'm ready today! They aren't making JavaScript live longer — that will happen regardless. There simply isn't the will among browser-makers to break it all at once, so all you're doing by breaking it is making something that no one can use because it's completely incompatible with everything on earth. I feel like people are misunderstanding the challenge here. The challenge is absolutely not creating a proposed standard or creating a virtual machine. Those are relatively easy. The challenge is herding browser-makers to whatever solution you propose. The nice thing about asm.js is that it automatically works everywhere and it's easy for browser-makers to transition their existing products to it. Because it takes the path of least resistance, has a better chance of living up to the real challenge — gaining acceptance — than any other plan I've heard. There are already lots of virtual machines out there. Throwing another one at the wall isn't going to suddenly bring us into a post-JavaScript world. It reminds me of the xkcd about standards: [Situation: There are 14 competing standards.] Guy: "14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases!" [SOON:] [Situation: There are 15 competing standards.]
• pcwalton 14y ago
  Algol, Cobol, and Fortran are languages—but new languages are precisely what asm.js enables.