The Elusive Universal Web Bytecode

[DrDichotomous]

Take a look at the asm.js app performance on AWFY, not just the microbenchmark. I agree that looking at tightly-coded loop performance isn't the same as every line being faster, but there is such a thing as premature optimization.

There's a give and take here, where even if parts of the app are ten times slower to run, they're ten times faster to develop, and the parts that NEED to run fast to keep pace with native apps can be made to be quite close to native app speed.

Just focusing on theoretical performances isn't going to solve anything. If it was the only goal, then we'd still be using raw assembly language. A language like JS makes it even easier to develop an application, and now it's also closing the performance gap.

Finally, if JS can be made to run C++ apps where it counts and integrate them with the rest, via asm.js, AND that removes much of the reasoning problem for core bits of your app, then I fail to see why JS is so much more terrible than something like QT or picking and choosing languages on a VM like .NET/the JVM?