D for the web?

[Marco Leise]

Am 24.01.2012, 16:41 Uhr, schrieb F i L <witte2008 at gmail.com>:

> 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.

I find the performance not so much the limiting factor as the lack of  
compact arrays to cache data. My JavaScript applications quickly become  
RAM hoggers. I'm not so keen on turning browsers into operating systems  
though. It is very difficult on the one hand to write such a browser,  
which shrinks the market, and we already have a good selection of  
operating systems and desktop environments, together with transparent  
storage of personal data, temporary files and configuration. Not to  
mention installers/uninstallers and the rest of the software  
infrastructure. Sun invented Java Web Start. Isn't that a technology that  
can serve the same purpose, without running the application in a  browser  
tab?