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> But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. Th

> But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. That's exactly the point. Imagine dozens of them.

lisper 13y ago
Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. Dozens of languages? I very much doubt that will happen. Just as we only have a small handful of codexes that actually matter (Flash, Silverlight, H264, maybe ogg) I predict that we will end up with a small number of languages that actually matter: Javascript, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. Maybe CL. IMHO that would be a better world than the one we currently live in. Javascript is serviceable for its original purpose, but for serious webapps it's broken beyond redemption. NOTE: This is not to say that it is impossible to write serious webapps in Javasceript. Obviously it is possible. What I mean is that at some point the aggregate cost of dealing with Javascript's design flaws becomes greater than the aggregate cost of dealing with multiple browser scripting languages.
- reissbaker 13y ago
  > Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. That's quite a stretch. There are two browser plugins that are in broad use on the web: Flash, for fallback audio/video support and some casual games, and Silverlight, for Netflix. Both are dead technologies when you consider mobile web; even if you're only thinking about laptops/desktops, both Silverlight and Flash have essentially been abandoned by their creators, and the web platform has almost entirely subsumed their original purpose for existing, currently with the exception of DRM. Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target, and languages can just target that — giving the web a broader selection of languages without the fragmented nightmare (and security nightmare) of introducing dozens of new plugins. This is something that browser vendors are currently working on: Google with PNACL, and Mozilla (and, to some extent, Google as well) with asm.js. I hope we end up with PNACL, but a sufficiently optimized asm.js would serve the same purpose, albeit with a more difficult debugging / performance optimization story.
  - lisper 13y ago
    > Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target That is a terrific idea in theory, but the last time anyone tried to do that the result was the JVM.
    - jimbokun 13y ago
      And the JVM is wonderful! Incredible amounts of R&D devoted to optimizing its performance, broad hardware and os support, with lots of interesting languages to choose from running on top of it.
      - lisper 13y ago
        Yes, but as a browser extension technology I think it's fair to say that it has failed.
    - quacker 13y ago
      Are you trolling here, or are you really implying that the JVM is bad? Could you elaborate? I consider the JVM to be the best part of programming in Java. The JVM is fast, lets you write very portable code, and it gives you a great debugging experience. Plenty of other languages chose to target the JVM, like Scala and Clojure, for its quality. That's not to say the JVM is perfect. I don't like type erasure for instance (I understand C# has 'better' generics). Nevertheless - and this idea comes up frequently - imagine if browsers ran VM bytecode instead of interpreting JavaScript. The browser would be totally language-independent. You could write in any language that compiles to the browser bytecode, and deploy the precompiled bytecode 'object' files. I mean, it is a great idea in theory, and it's exactly what the JVM has succeeded in doing, except that the JVM does it for operating systems and not browsers. Of course, this is all a fantasy at this point. There's no possible way browser vendors would ever agree on a standardized virtual machine, much less all implement it (see DartVM).
      - lisper 13y ago
        > Are you trolling here, or are you really implying that the JVM is bad? Could you elaborate? No, I'm not trolling. I was responding to someone who said that the two non-dead browser plugin technologies were flash and silverlight. Java is notably absent from that list. (Can you even interact with the DOM from a Java applet?) I agree with you that the JVM is the best part of Java, but that's not saying much IMHO.

lisper 13y ago

Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. Dozens of languages? I very much doubt that will happen. Just as we only have a small handful of codexes that actually matter (Flash, Silverlight, H264, maybe ogg) I predict that we will end up with a small number of languages that actually matter: Javascript, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. Maybe CL. IMHO that would be a better world than the one we currently live in. Javascript is serviceable for its original purpose, but for serious webapps it's broken beyond redemption. NOTE: This is not to say that it is impossible to write serious webapps in Javasceript. Obviously it is possible. What I mean is that at some point the aggregate cost of dealing with Javascript's design flaws becomes greater than the aggregate cost of dealing with multiple browser scripting languages.

reissbaker 13y ago
> Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. That's quite a stretch. There are two browser plugins that are in broad use on the web: Flash, for fallback audio/video support and some casual games, and Silverlight, for Netflix. Both are dead technologies when you consider mobile web; even if you're only thinking about laptops/desktops, both Silverlight and Flash have essentially been abandoned by their creators, and the web platform has almost entirely subsumed their original purpose for existing, currently with the exception of DRM. Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target, and languages can just target that — giving the web a broader selection of languages without the fragmented nightmare (and security nightmare) of introducing dozens of new plugins. This is something that browser vendors are currently working on: Google with PNACL, and Mozilla (and, to some extent, Google as well) with asm.js. I hope we end up with PNACL, but a sufficiently optimized asm.js would serve the same purpose, albeit with a more difficult debugging / performance optimization story.
- lisper 13y ago
  > Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target That is a terrific idea in theory, but the last time anyone tried to do that the result was the JVM.
  - jimbokun 13y ago
    And the JVM is wonderful! Incredible amounts of R&D devoted to optimizing its performance, broad hardware and os support, with lots of interesting languages to choose from running on top of it.
    - lisper 13y ago
      Yes, but as a browser extension technology I think it's fair to say that it has failed.
  - quacker 13y ago
    Are you trolling here, or are you really implying that the JVM is bad? Could you elaborate? I consider the JVM to be the best part of programming in Java. The JVM is fast, lets you write very portable code, and it gives you a great debugging experience. Plenty of other languages chose to target the JVM, like Scala and Clojure, for its quality. That's not to say the JVM is perfect. I don't like type erasure for instance (I understand C# has 'better' generics). Nevertheless - and this idea comes up frequently - imagine if browsers ran VM bytecode instead of interpreting JavaScript. The browser would be totally language-independent. You could write in any language that compiles to the browser bytecode, and deploy the precompiled bytecode 'object' files. I mean, it is a great idea in theory, and it's exactly what the JVM has succeeded in doing, except that the JVM does it for operating systems and not browsers. Of course, this is all a fantasy at this point. There's no possible way browser vendors would ever agree on a standardized virtual machine, much less all implement it (see DartVM).
    - lisper 13y ago
      > Are you trolling here, or are you really implying that the JVM is bad? Could you elaborate? No, I'm not trolling. I was responding to someone who said that the two non-dead browser plugin technologies were flash and silverlight. Java is notably absent from that list. (Can you even interact with the DOM from a Java applet?) I agree with you that the JVM is the best part of Java, but that's not saying much IMHO.