[drdaeman]

> No, asm.js is a JS subset. "bytecode" as boosted here would be a non-subset, like JVML to Java source.

Sorry for quoting Wikipedia, but bytecode is just a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter.

Maybe I'm mistaken on this, but from reading about asm.js I got an impression that asm.js-aware browsers use different approach to asm.js code and treat it more like a weirdly-encoded bytecode, not as an ordirary JS source. Or I'm misunderstanding things?

If so, asm.js is a bytecode. Whenever there's a correspondence between it and other languages doesn't matter for determining if it's bytecode or not, it's another (useful, but not related to being bytecode) property.

> They want a different syntax.

I don't think syntax matters that much, it's mostly semantics. Probably.

[Skinney]

actually, asm.js is just javascript. Basically, Mozilla looked at what sort of javascript code that the different JIT's allready handle really well, and made a specification out of it. So even in Chrome, asm.js will run very efficiently. Mozilla figuered out a way to write javascript code that made type-information easy to extract, which again makes it easy to AOT-compile. For instance, the following code:

    function asmjs(i) {
        i = i|0;
        return (i + 1)|0;
    }

is valid javascript, and you can easily write this in your own programs. The "|0" means that the variable will be converted to a integer, because it is specified in the javascript standard. As an optimization, you can use this as a type annotation, kind of like writing "int i = 0;" This is what asm.js is in a nutshell, and why it's so easy to implement a special compiler for it.

[BrendanEich]

You are replacing the "bytecode" objection, which is about syntax, with your own non-objection equating asm.js with a bytecode like JVML. I'm happy you're ok with asm.js, but those who are not, and who demand "bytecode", do care about syntax first.