6 ms·

I love the fact that Mozilla keeps pushing javascript to its limits. They seem to be doing a lot of things really well lately, this is awesome!! Plus you have F

I love the fact that Mozilla keeps pushing javascript to its limits. They seem to be doing a lot of things really well lately, this is awesome!! Plus you have Firefox OS, which pushes web-standards to native mobile. Now I just wish the devtools would get up to paar with those on chrome/chromium and I'd be switching back to FF in a heartbeat. I wish google would stay on board with JS since they have the engineering power to do a lot in this area, but to me it seems after V8 they've kind of abbonned JS in favor of Dart (As oppossed to supporting asm.js). For instance, I just did the "try anyway" in chrome 26.0 linux and everything crashed. Did anyone get it working in chrome?

alec 13y ago
v8 doesn't look abandoned to me: there have been 19 commits so far today to the public v8 repository. https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/list https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/list
eslaught 13y ago
From the FAQ: - Chrome currently crashes, but is expected to be resolved by the Chrome team soon. http://www.unrealengine.com/html5_faq/ http://www.unrealengine.com/html5_faq/
- tomwalker 13y ago
  I wish I had read that first :/ Crashed my whole system Chromium 25.0.1364.160 Ubuntu 12.04
  - itistoday2 13y ago
    This shouldn't be possible if the OS is written correctly. :-\
    - drmr 13y ago
      He's on Ubuntu. Anything is possible to make it crash.
      - OGC 13y ago
        Both of these comments are idiotic and flamebait.
        itistoday2 13y ago
        Now that is an example of a high-quality comment! Adds value to the conversation and in no way may be considered flamebait. :-p
        derefr 13y ago
        You would think, but I've noticed that on HN specifically, the comment pointing out that a stupid argument is forming--if it gets in early enough--tends to be both highly upvoted, and the end of the argument. One reason I like this community.
        itistoday2 13y ago
        There was no argument, whether "stupid" or not. You're welcome to start one.
        OGC 13y ago
        There already was another comment pointing out that one could kill the process from another tty.
        itistoday2 13y ago
        I interpreted "Crashed my whole system" as meaning that option wasn't possible.
        gcb0 13y ago
        And yours is very polite and contribute a lot to the discussion ;-) but being the devils advocate here, both parents of your comment are not that far off. Ubuntu is more prone to crash because it invites the user to install much more closed source and proprietary code, by design. so they are not that idiotic and flamebaitic.
    - gcb0 13y ago
      My bet: the OS and all the code running on it is written correctly. and you can see it gave you a warning about tainted kernel when you loaded that piece of crap nvidia/ati proprietary driver.
  - laumars 13y ago
    How? Couldn't you even drop to another TTY and kill the process?
    - OGC 13y ago
      I'd bet money OP didn't even try or doesnt know how to do that.
      - laumars 13y ago
        This is what I thought to. I've never once had an application in Linux crash the whole OS - or at least not so long as I've had physical access to the machine (I've had rouge database requests brick a server before because it took down sshd - but that's a different story) In fact on the laptop I'm on now, the parent link crashed Firefox. But it OOM'ed and got killed before I even noticed there was a problem (and that's on a beefy desktop environment with compositing enabled too)
        nkozyra 13y ago
        You should tell your database to go easy on the rouge - a lady keeps it subtle.
    - hdevalence 13y ago
      I've had problems with fglrx where it crashes because you resize the window too quickly, and then it's done something really funky, so when you do CTRL+ALT+F_N it doesn't actually give you a shell.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Just took out that tab for me in windows. Seems like something else is probably going on for you.
    - laumars 13y ago
      Chromium has been a little dodgy for me lately too. Lots of memory leaks and what not. I've had to kill it's parent process id on a number of occasions (but even then, there's no reason why a browser should take out the whole OS).
      - isalmon 13y ago
        Same here. Google has to do something with all these memory leaks.
        gcb0 13y ago
        ...Or releasing their iron grip on the repo.
      - atesti 13y ago
        They are also not really visibly working on issues like these: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=222558 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=222558 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=134837 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=134837 Basically, each font in each size uses some handles in a renderer. At 10000 handles, the tab renderer dies. They have a font cache but never clear it. When enough render processes together use too many GDI handles, the whole Windows desktop breaks down.
  - ironcladlou 13y ago
    Same here; google-chrome-unstable-28.0.1485.0-195393.x86_64 on Fedora 18. Hardest crash I've experienced on this new setup.
  - mickt 13y ago
    On Chromium 25.0.1364.160 on Ubuntu 13.04 just the running tab died.
ok_craig 13y ago
Google abandon javascript? You're joking, right?
DanielRibeiro 13y ago
Many people are doing some pretty amazing things with WebGL: http://wp.me/puh71-9M http://wp.me/puh71-9M
- CmonNoReg 13y ago
  The only amazing stuff is the distribution mechanism really. Other stuff is just plain old OpenGL but in your browser this time. It is not like it has some crazy support for raytraced voxels or something.
  - hugofirth 13y ago
    I personally love that OpenGL is 'plain old' haha. Not to criticise your comment at all - but as someone who's been forced to work with OpenGL 3.3-4 quite a lot recently ... it's pretty incredible at times. Also - as I understand it, what's impressive about all this isn't just the graphics. Once you've passed vertices etc... off to the graphics pipeline then yes Javascript doesn't handle much of the load .... but as we know a lot of games are CPU bound, and the fact that Javascript is increasingly able to offer acceptable performance relative to the native compiled experience of c/c++ is pretty nuts.
  - azakai 13y ago
    > The only amazing stuff is the distribution mechanism really. That's the main thing, but not the only thing. WebGL is also very portable, more than other flavors of GL. Huge effort has gone into that. As a result there is a much better chance a WebGL app will give the same output on different browsers/OSes/GPUs (and if it does not, that's a bug that should be fixed). WebGL is also more secure than OpenGL, since it was designed to run in a web browser, that executes unsafe code off the web.
apaprocki 13y ago
The original team working on V8 in Aarhus switched to work on Dart, so V8 transferred ownership to a team in Munich. It is still very much alive and well :)
beaner 13y ago
> I love the fact that Mozilla keeps pushing javascript to its limits. You make it sound like they're the only ones doing this kind of thing. Anybody remember this? www.findyourwaytooz.com
ahoge 13y ago
>[Google has] kind of abbonned JS in favor of Dart Where did you get that idea? Just look at these graphs: http://www.dartlang.org/performance/ http://www.dartlang.org/performance/ Apparently, they are still trying to make V8 faster. V8's graph isn't flat and there are also very recent bumps. >As oppossed to supporting asm.js Asm.js is about JavaScript the compiler target, not JavaScript itself. Using asm.js means writing code in C/C++ (or something similar), which means it's more comparable to PNaCl than Dart.
- satori99 13y ago
  While generally that is true about asm.js, there is nothing stopping anyone from writing asm.js code by hand. It is still just javascript and totally readable as such. For example: https://gist.github.com/calvinmetcalf/5473022 https://gist.github.com/calvinmetcalf/5473022
freyr 13y ago
> they've kind of abbonned JS in favor of Dart Haven't they announced that they have no plans to integrate the Dart VM with the Blink rendering engine?

alec 13y ago

v8 doesn't look abandoned to me: there have been 19 commits so far today to the public v8 repository. https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/list https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/list

eslaught 13y ago

From the FAQ: - Chrome currently crashes, but is expected to be resolved by the Chrome team soon. http://www.unrealengine.com/html5_faq/ http://www.unrealengine.com/html5_faq/

tomwalker 13y ago
I wish I had read that first :/ Crashed my whole system Chromium 25.0.1364.160 Ubuntu 12.04
- itistoday2 13y ago
  This shouldn't be possible if the OS is written correctly. :-\
  - drmr 13y ago
    He's on Ubuntu. Anything is possible to make it crash.
    - OGC 13y ago
      Both of these comments are idiotic and flamebait.
      - itistoday2 13y ago
        Now that is an example of a high-quality comment! Adds value to the conversation and in no way may be considered flamebait. :-p
        derefr 13y ago
        You would think, but I've noticed that on HN specifically, the comment pointing out that a stupid argument is forming--if it gets in early enough--tends to be both highly upvoted, and the end of the argument. One reason I like this community.
        itistoday2 13y ago
        There was no argument, whether "stupid" or not. You're welcome to start one.
        OGC 13y ago
        There already was another comment pointing out that one could kill the process from another tty.
        itistoday2 13y ago
        I interpreted "Crashed my whole system" as meaning that option wasn't possible.
      - gcb0 13y ago
        And yours is very polite and contribute a lot to the discussion ;-) but being the devils advocate here, both parents of your comment are not that far off. Ubuntu is more prone to crash because it invites the user to install much more closed source and proprietary code, by design. so they are not that idiotic and flamebaitic.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    My bet: the OS and all the code running on it is written correctly. and you can see it gave you a warning about tainted kernel when you loaded that piece of crap nvidia/ati proprietary driver.
- laumars 13y ago
  How? Couldn't you even drop to another TTY and kill the process?
  - OGC 13y ago
    I'd bet money OP didn't even try or doesnt know how to do that.
    - laumars 13y ago
      This is what I thought to. I've never once had an application in Linux crash the whole OS - or at least not so long as I've had physical access to the machine (I've had rouge database requests brick a server before because it took down sshd - but that's a different story) In fact on the laptop I'm on now, the parent link crashed Firefox. But it OOM'ed and got killed before I even noticed there was a problem (and that's on a beefy desktop environment with compositing enabled too)
      - nkozyra 13y ago
        You should tell your database to go easy on the rouge - a lady keeps it subtle.
  - hdevalence 13y ago
    I've had problems with fglrx where it crashes because you resize the window too quickly, and then it's done something really funky, so when you do CTRL+ALT+F_N it doesn't actually give you a shell.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Just took out that tab for me in windows. Seems like something else is probably going on for you.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Chromium has been a little dodgy for me lately too. Lots of memory leaks and what not. I've had to kill it's parent process id on a number of occasions (but even then, there's no reason why a browser should take out the whole OS).
    - isalmon 13y ago
      Same here. Google has to do something with all these memory leaks.
      - gcb0 13y ago
        ...Or releasing their iron grip on the repo.
    - atesti 13y ago
      They are also not really visibly working on issues like these: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=222558 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=222558 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=134837 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=134837 Basically, each font in each size uses some handles in a renderer. At 10000 handles, the tab renderer dies. They have a font cache but never clear it. When enough render processes together use too many GDI handles, the whole Windows desktop breaks down.
- ironcladlou 13y ago
  Same here; google-chrome-unstable-28.0.1485.0-195393.x86_64 on Fedora 18. Hardest crash I've experienced on this new setup.
- mickt 13y ago
  On Chromium 25.0.1364.160 on Ubuntu 13.04 just the running tab died.

ok_craig 13y ago

Google abandon javascript? You're joking, right?

DanielRibeiro 13y ago

Many people are doing some pretty amazing things with WebGL: http://wp.me/puh71-9M http://wp.me/puh71-9M

CmonNoReg 13y ago
The only amazing stuff is the distribution mechanism really. Other stuff is just plain old OpenGL but in your browser this time. It is not like it has some crazy support for raytraced voxels or something.
- hugofirth 13y ago
  I personally love that OpenGL is 'plain old' haha. Not to criticise your comment at all - but as someone who's been forced to work with OpenGL 3.3-4 quite a lot recently ... it's pretty incredible at times. Also - as I understand it, what's impressive about all this isn't just the graphics. Once you've passed vertices etc... off to the graphics pipeline then yes Javascript doesn't handle much of the load .... but as we know a lot of games are CPU bound, and the fact that Javascript is increasingly able to offer acceptable performance relative to the native compiled experience of c/c++ is pretty nuts.
- azakai 13y ago
  > The only amazing stuff is the distribution mechanism really. That's the main thing, but not the only thing. WebGL is also very portable, more than other flavors of GL. Huge effort has gone into that. As a result there is a much better chance a WebGL app will give the same output on different browsers/OSes/GPUs (and if it does not, that's a bug that should be fixed). WebGL is also more secure than OpenGL, since it was designed to run in a web browser, that executes unsafe code off the web.

apaprocki 13y ago

The original team working on V8 in Aarhus switched to work on Dart, so V8 transferred ownership to a team in Munich. It is still very much alive and well :)

beaner 13y ago

> I love the fact that Mozilla keeps pushing javascript to its limits. You make it sound like they're the only ones doing this kind of thing. Anybody remember this? www.findyourwaytooz.com

ahoge 13y ago

>[Google has] kind of abbonned JS in favor of Dart Where did you get that idea? Just look at these graphs: http://www.dartlang.org/performance/ http://www.dartlang.org/performance/ Apparently, they are still trying to make V8 faster. V8's graph isn't flat and there are also very recent bumps. >As oppossed to supporting asm.js Asm.js is about JavaScript the compiler target, not JavaScript itself. Using asm.js means writing code in C/C++ (or something similar), which means it's more comparable to PNaCl than Dart.

satori99 13y ago
While generally that is true about asm.js, there is nothing stopping anyone from writing asm.js code by hand. It is still just javascript and totally readable as such. For example: https://gist.github.com/calvinmetcalf/5473022 https://gist.github.com/calvinmetcalf/5473022

freyr 13y ago

> they've kind of abbonned JS in favor of Dart Haven't they announced that they have no plans to integrate the Dart VM with the Blink rendering engine?