D for the web?

[F i L]

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> Moreover, it seems that getting a new scripting language 
> implemented in web browsers isn't going to be easy.  But it 
> seems that language-to-JS compilers would work as long as the 
> language's concepts are readily and efficiently implementable 
> in JS.

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> Moreover, it seems that getting a new scripting language 
> implemented in web browsers isn't going to be easy.  But it 
> seems that language-to-JS compilers would work as long as the 
> language's concepts are readily and efficiently implementable 
> in JS.

Problem with efficiency is, in the best of cases, Javascript is 
15-30x slower than native C code; and only after a lot of 
fine-tuning and on the newest browsers. Modzilla and Google 
engineers have been hacking away at performance issues for years, 
but the problem is Ecmascript's spec is the real limiting factor. 
The spec does update, but when major browsers vendors like 
Microsoft simply ignore implantation proposals (like SVG) and 
fight against spec improvements (like Ecmascript 4.0) new 
features can hardly be used at large, considering 30-40% of web 
traffic is still Internet Explorer.

This is why I mentioned Google's Native Client (NaCL), which if 
you don't already know, is a *plugin* for running sandboxed 
native code (@ 95% efficiency) over the web with the same 
security limits as Javascript. The world needs Operating Systems 
that work like browsers IMO, and I think D would fit in nicely 
here.