[angelbob]

So... Adobe is arguing that nobody will ever figure out how to put a better compiler in front of JavaScript under any circumstances, so we have to pack it in now?

I realize current JIT sucks in many ways, but seriously... claiming that "we can put this compiler in front of our stuff and since the other guys can never, never figure out how to compile first, we will win forever" isn't just stupid. It seems willfully stupid.

Like, what about the second and successive times you run a given page's JavaScript, like if the page were in cache. Are they certain that open source's brain trust can never figure out how to compile that ahead of time?

Really?

[rquantz]

Well, to be fair, the article does start with the warning that this is not the opinion of Adobe.

But yes, it seems absurd to say that JIT compilers will never get better, especially given the improvements we've seen in the last few years.

[gcp]

Not knowing ActionScript, the point seems to boil down to no more than "statically typed languages will always be faster than dynamic ones". This is true no matter what, "open source brain" can't fix that.

However, one could make the same argument for C++: Why Python is not a worthy competitor. Sounds silly? It is, just like the original post.

[VMG]

> However, one could make the same argument for C++: Why Python is not a worthy competitor. Sounds silly? It is, just like the original post.

Not quite. Nobody claims that python will completely eliminate the need for C++, but there are people claiming that JS will replace flash.

[angelbob]

They actually have various ways to compile Python. So that's an especially apt comparison :-)