New opportunities for D => ASM.js

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 13 May 2014 at 17:16:18 UTC, Etienne wrote:
>
> I've been reading on Emscripten and LDC and how they would be 
> nice together, and came across this nice little library:
> http://www.leaningtech.com/duetto/examples/
>
> It's a C++ server/client framework that compiles to JS through 
> clang => LLVM bytecode => ASM.js.
>
> I'd like to point out that asm.js is a very fast subset of the 
> javascript language that allows almost native speeds (3x 
> slowdown vs C only) which enables games to be run in the 
> browser without external dependencies.
>
> This had me thinking of forking the Emscripten project in order 
> to support the druntime / phobos library & give it access to 
> the browser DOM interface, as to allow javascript web 
> applications to be written fully in D (to produce interfaces 
> like openUI5 and more).
>
> This would have multiple advantages:
> - Suitable for huge front-end development frameworks using safe 
> typing and contractual programming
> - Opens the door to petaFLOPS of distributed CPU power based 
> simply on website visitation without affecting user experience
> - Allows Javascript proprietary code to be harder to 
> de-obfuscate or reverse engineer
> - FAST Browser-based database engines and full runtime 
> capabilities can be developed (and added as browser extensions 
> for persistence) to be actively used by the server with a 
> simple interface
>
> And most of all, it simplifies web development.
>
> I'm not going to instantly call for a project to be started, 
> but I'd love to hear some why do's and why don'ts b/c I don't 
> like to rely on my point of view alone.

I don't like technologies that originate from one company for 
various reasons, and I hate JS. But then again, what can we do? 
JS is everywhere. I wouldn't mind "compiling" to JS as long as I 
can develop in a proper language like D.

On the other hand, all those JS solutions show that JS is shit 
and nobody is happy with it, everyone hates it and there's no way 
of fixing it. Maybe it's time to start a revolution and get rid 
of JS. Maybe something along the lines of an abstract 
interface-like language that compiles to native code via C, and 
the concrete code can be written in any language.