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by kartan 3124 days ago
For me the main point is WebAssembly. Javascript was the only option for the web (As the article notices you can compile/transpile to Javascript but this was adding more complexity for less gain). With more options developers will use languages that better adapt their taste and needs. C++ can be highly optimized when creating WebAssembly code, C# and Java offer flexibility, Python and Groovy are easier to star to use, etc.

Javascript was used beyond it's own merits as a language. It was the only feasible door to pluguinless development in the web. WebAssembly will allow people to choose. And even that a lot of developer will still have Javascript as a first option, others will not, and the web development environment is going to deeply change.

1 comments

If javascript goes the ecosystem goes too.

In real applications we need to use social login, share, google maps, shopify buy SDK, S3, Azure speech API and so on. The javascript tools to access all of that are plain old ES5 at best. How will we use them from another language?

Libraries, too. Are we going to find ourselves writing our own custom dropdowns and datepickers in C++? Not to mention our own view update and state management libraries.

This is the reason there are next to none real world examples of web apps made in Elm. No communication with planet Earth.

> Libraries, too. Are we going to find ourselves writing our own custom dropdowns and datepickers in C++?

You are talking about C++. If a library exists, already exists an implementation for it in C++. Comparing Elm with C++ doesn't makes so much sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_G...

Dunno, I am one of the suckers who learned AngularJS 1. May the whole JS ecosystem burn in hell? Don't mind switching wasm GUI frameworks if I can choose the language.
I second this. I will be hedging on JavaScript reigning supreme for the next 5-10 years