2 ms·
I see the point; but I don't think it has enough justification. Something evolutionary successful isn't always globally perfect - rather it's most probable alon
by avmich 13y ago
I see the point; but I don't think it has enough justification. Something evolutionary successful isn't always globally perfect - rather it's most probable along the path from there to here.
JavaScript may stay long with us. Or - as sometimes happens - it could be eclipsed in few years, as happened with technologies and paradigms before. Say, guessing correctly on technologies in use in 2000, sitting in 1990, would be quite hard.
Not that "more direct approach" of defining bytecode and standardizing should always be better. With ideas disruptive enough many bets are off.
- derefr 13y agoBut it seems to me that "evolving into" the use of other languages through Javascript, will allow us to start ignoring the fact that it's Javascript in particular that we're targeting--such that, one day soon, the browser-makers will just give us a "shortcut" to doing the things that have already evolved, without all the Javascript-y mess in-between. But something has to get popular first as a new "open web-scripting language", before the browser-makers will be willing to all go in on supporting it. (Otherwise you get the reactions you see by, e.g., Mozilla to Google's NaCl.) And that was a chicken-and-egg problem until now, because you can't really create and force universal adoption of an "open web-scripting language" (or framework, or platform, or bytecode, etc.) if you're just one company. But now, with asm.js, you can--and the rest of the steps will follow soon after.