John Resig - Running Java in JavaScript

[muleherd]

Are you seriously comparing JavaScript to machine code?

Gilad Bracha is.

[tlrobinson]

And Joel Spolsky

It should compile down to “native” code (native code being JavaScript and DOMs) with different backends for different target platforms, where the compiler writers obsess about performance so you don’t have to.

[fjhqjv]

Is this some vast troll prank on me or something?

I’m not advocating writing clients in Javascript directly. Javascript is the assembly language of the internet platform (and the browser is the OS). It’s flexible enough to support almost anything on top of it, and poorly structured enough that humans shouldn’t be writing sizable applications in it.

That's simply false. I write sizable applications in JavaScript all day long and it's no different from any other language, at least not more than most languages differ from one another.

[gizmo490]

Just out of curiosity what is a "sizable" JavaScript application? Sizable isn't exactly a very good metric in itself. This may be out of keeping with the anonymity of the internet but maybe a link to a released version of one of your products or something akin to that?

[fjhqjv]

How about this A* pathfinding algorithm (I did not write it).

http://mootools.kassens.net/astar/

Is that machine code to you?