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by j_baker 5689 days ago
I think bytecode in the browser would be useful even if we still used it to run pre-compiled JavaScript code that got no speed benefit. Not only would it remove the problem of different browsers having different versions of the language standard, but it would allow the language to evolve without having to wait for every browser to catch up to the standard.
1 comments
Joeri 5689 days ago
Yeah, but all the popular bytecode engines end up being versioned anyway. I don't doubt that bytecode would allow for adding some syntactic sugar without upgrading the browser engine, but so does JS-to-JS compilation, which is available today, even on IE6. And if people really wanted those features, wouldn't there be tons of objective-j programmers?
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chc 5689 days ago
No, because Objective-J essentially just adds Objective-C syntax on top of JavaScript — but most people don't particularly love the syntax of Objective-C. You look at one language's lack of popularity and extrapolate that people just must not like languages.
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Joeri 5685 days ago
First of all, a lot more people like that syntax than you make it out to be. It's popular enough that objective-j should have caught on. The fact that it didn't is telling.

Secondly, I was only using it as an example. I base my opinion on the lack of popularity of all cross-compilation engines except GWT. There's two ways of looking at that. One is that GWT proves the demand for other languages because of its success. The other is that GWT proves the demand for other languages is not that big, because otherwise those other languages would have GWT-like platforms in the field already. I'm partial to the latter.

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