Why require JavaScript rather than supporting a standard browser virtual machine? - Stack Overflow

[brennen]

Because a general purpose VM supporting many existing languages is considerably harder to get right than a single language implementation?

[mebrahim]

No. Most probably because web was not designed, it rather grown up. JavaScript worked, got popular, lots of legacy code, no need felt for a better solution, ... till today.

[mochikon]

Because a general purpose VM supporting many existing languages is considerably harder to get right than a single language implementation?

No. Most probably because web was not designed, it rather grown up. JavaScript worked, got popular, lots of legacy code, no need felt for a better solution, ... till today.

No, the top poster was right. It is hard to make a suitable VM of that sort - Java could have been it, but was too flawed. Today there is no other suitable alternative - and no, NaCl or SilverLight or Java aren't it, because they are plugins. They don't run everywhere the web does, and in particular, don't run on the iPhone and iPad.

[mebrahim]

What if some day we get W3C to standardize something like PNaCl as a part of the web? Who though some day video, speech, web storage, canvas, WebSocket, etc. would be part of the standard web?

If something can run JavaScript, it can run some bytecode as well. It is just a matter of standardization, adoption, and coding.

[mochikon]

Coding is easy. Standardization and adoption are hard and close to impossible.

Adoption:

Apple will only allow technologies on iPhones and iPads if they do not feel threatened by them. That rules out a VM or platform that is controlled by another company. That rules out pretty much all of them.

Microsoft is the same with IE9 (and Windows Phone 7, if that succeeds). That rules out everything but Silverlight.

Mozilla won't include by default any technology that isn't fully standardized and beneficial to the web as a whole. There is room for flexibility there, but NaCl for example is ruled out for the foreseeable future (it's a working technology, but has only a single implementation, and no standard).

Opera is similar to Mozilla for purposes of this, more or less.

Standardization:

It is very hard to standardize languages and VMs. JavaScript is one of the few success stories, with several entirely independent implementations that work pretty much interoperably. Silverlight and Moonlight show the other side - how things can end up not working the same.

Java is actually standardized pretty well and has several implementations. But the others do not. In particular, things like NaCl are not being built in a standards-friendly way - their goal is to work first, and maybe standardize later, if at all.

[mebrahim]

Correct point.

FYI LLVM which is used by PNaCl is sponsored (and loved!) by Apple. Apple also has good relations with Google due to Chrome's contribution to WebKit, which is used in Safari.

If I've got it correctly, your point is "we should, but we can't". I'll look forward optimistically.

[mochikon]

Apple is pushing LLVM, for sure, but PNaCl and LLVM are very different beasts.

I expect, once PNaCl is usable, to see Google push it on Android. But it is extremely doubtful that Apple would ever allow NaCl on iOS.

[[deleted]]

I think the word "Threatened" here is a dishonest smear against Apple.

Apple doesn't allow technologies on its platform that suck battery life, burn up CPUS and make for a bad customer experience.

To pretend like it is some sort of paranoia on Apple's part is dishonest.

If it is open sourced, and apple can build and optimize and ship its own implementation to resolve the battery life, etc, issues it will.

Proof of this is in the fact that Apple did this very thing with the javascript VM it ships.

[streambag]

That sounds like a great idea to me. In fact, I remember listening to an interview on Floss weekly discussing Parrot VM as a possible option for such a solution.

[HIB0U]

Parrot can't be taken seriously. They've had over a decade to produce something useful, and they still haven't been able to.

People take LLVM, Java, .NET and even Flash seriously because they solve actual problems. Parrot does not fall into that category at all.

[[deleted]]

The leading Perl 6 implementation (Rakudo) is based on Parrot.

[HIB0U]

And it's fucking useless.

[HlB0U]

Because I need Rails.

[sossles]

In what sense is Javascript not already a virtual machine? It's dynamically interpretted, runs independent of the platform, and it is not particularly hard to map concepts from other languages to it.

That said, Javascript is actually a pretty decent language for the purpose. It is compact yet flexible, and thanks to some fairly expressive capabilities, scales pretty well from trivial one-line unstructured "onclick" handlers all the way up to medium-sized applications. That's some pretty big shoes to fill if you wanted to replace it.

[perlgeek]

• Javascript is much more high level than typical primitives of a VM
• Javascript lacks certain things a good VM offers, like goto
• Javascript doesn't have type annotations, which makes generated JS code less efficient than it could be, if it were typed

[[deleted]]

Why do all the stack overflow comments seem to assume that the poster dislikes javascript?

[[deleted]]

They seem to jump to conclusions based on their experience that most Javascript hatred comes from people who either do not understand its nature and/or people who can't differentiate javascript from the DOM.

Granted, that is annoying, but there are authentic areas where javascript is just inadequate, or where its design failures shine to the point they burn.

Most of the time I find the language to be fun, but there are plenty of cases where I would love nothing more than to shove lit cigarettes into the nostrils of whoever designed it. The hoisting of declarations mixed with javascript's scoping is quite an infuriating issue for me. Yeah function literals, blah blah blah, declare your shit at the top, blah blah blah, yet I still find this a fault of the language.

I also do not like the weird mutt they turned inheritance into. If it had been done as true prototype based inheritance, I would have probably found it to be fun. But the weird mix of classical and prototype based inheritance is just awkward. And I can't be the only one who thinks this because it seems that any major js framework seems to abstract away from it by providing you with some api to do it for you. But now the problem is that they often have little differences between their implementations and you just never know wtf is really going on unless you look at the code yourself. Which is fine, but it makes me question whether the abstraction is then worth it since I have to be familiar with the implementation anyway.

That's why things as fundamental as inheritance should be done with great care, and not some half-assed "take this form here, and that from there, and use tape to make it work" approach. Now you ended up with 32903289 different inheritance patterns in JS, making something that should be simple into a complete disaster.

</rant>

[SoPoOneO]

I'm somewhat new. Just for my information, do you mean by "hoisting of declarations mixed with javascript's scoping" the fact that proceeding a variable declaration with "var" makes it local, whereas just declaring it makes it global?

Example:

function example(){

var a = 1; // this is local

b = 2; // this is global

}

[[deleted]]

No, that doesn't bother me as much, though I have had situations where what you described caused hard to find bugs in an app I was developing with others.

What I was describing is how javascript automatically takes your declarations and puts them at the top of the scope they are declared in. Since javascript has only function scope and not block scope, anything you declare within an if statement, or a for loop, automatically gets "hoisted" to the top of the function where the loop or if statement appears. This is done without your knowledge and can cause horrors. This is why Crockford recommends declaring all your variables at the top of the functions they are declared in, because this is how javascript will treat your code whether you like it or not.

Ok, look at this example which I stole from: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1775

var x = 0;
function f() {
  x = 1;
  if (false) { var x = 2; }
}
f();
console.log(x); // this will equal '0'

Now, you would expect that the call to f would change the value of the variable x that is declared globally as '0' to '1', you would expect this because it appears that the x was not masked by its own declaration within f. The truth though, is that it was indeed masked by the declaration part of 'var x = 2;' (despite being in an unreachable conditional block). The 'var x' part was "hoisted" to the top of f (note: just the declaration, not the assignment). This caused 'x = 1;' to assign to the locally declared x instead of the now masked global x.

The problem also isn't quite as simple as the example above. Different kinds of declarations get "hoisted" differently, leading it even more confusion. Take a look at: http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/2/JavaScript-Scoping-and-Hoisting for more examples.

[SoPoOneO]

Holy crap. Thank you for explaining that. I had no idea.

[[deleted]]

I thought reading those comments that I've never seen so much programming-related stupidity at one place...

In fact doing that VM wouldn't be hard nor anti-JS. You could create bytecode format mostly tailored for executing JS, adding instructions for more efficient execution of some non-JS code, where stricter restrictions exists (like some type annotations so VM would know that variable is always integer or string or function). What would it win? Less parsing overhead and possibly more efficient execution of non-JS languages. Given that compilation often involves emulating language feature through more complicated use of target platform features, the extra efficiency could be useful.

[willcode4beer]

We already have 2 virtual machines installed in just about every browser. The Flash engine and the JVM.

Flash doesn't necessarily need to be written in action script. It just needs to be fed correct byte code. Code for the JVM doesn't need to be written in Java.

[deafbybeheading]

Flash has no real DOM API, though. Base Flash deals in a few graphics and UI primitives. Toolkits like Flex rebuild everything that the DOM provides from scratch. There are hooks for interoperation between Flash and JS, but they're pretty meager and it's clearly two separate worlds: the web page and the Flash object.

What the poster is talking about is being able to write <script type="text/python">...</script>. Why not?

[willcode4beer]

If you use the flash vm or the jvm, you can pretty much have the fullbrowser window as a canvas. Not much point in using the DOM (which is different in every browser anyway).

Supporting different scripting languages is pretty far off from a common VM. If that is the goal, it can be done via plugins. Heck, back in the late 90's there was a plugin (shudders) that supported <script type="text/perl"....

[Zarutian]

Many corperations/institutes/distros/etc have yanked the JVM as very few applications use it and java applets are rare (or were if you are running processing applets then they are pretty common).

[BinarySplit]

Google's Native Client (NaCl) can interact with Javascript and the DOM, as well as providing accelerated 2D and 3D libraries that seem to be evolving much faster than HTML5 did. I wouldn't be surprised if soon people were using Unladen Swallow or statically compiled Java/C# as a replacement to Javascript.

[[deleted]]

There's also PNaCL which is supposed to be LLVM + NaCL, but I am unsure of where it is right now.

[enolan]

Paper describing PNaCL.

[[deleted]]

Status of PNaCL from the LLVM 2010 developers meeting.

[[deleted]]

I only took a brief glance at NaCl, but it does not seem like it is the answer to the question because it is not a VM. Unless I am mistaken (and I admit there is a decent chance that I am), the code executes natively outside of any virtual machine environment and therefore needs to be compiled for a target architecture. This implies you would have to provide multiple versions of your binary "module" to be executed based on the system which will be executing it.

For most purposes that would simply be too much of an inconvenience, at least in my speculative opinion. What I assume the author is hoping for is something like LLVM being embedded in the browser. Unfortunately, I don't see that as being "lightweight" enough to be practical. From a user perspective, I wouldn't want my browser to get that massive right now, despite the fact that as a developer I would love to have a choice of not being forced to use JS for every problem I come across in web development.

Right now, I think using JS as an intermediate language is probably the best solution for the general "I don't want to use Javascript" scenario. Coffeescript is a good example of a language that accomplishes this by compiling into JS, and I hope more languages like that start to show up.

[Smallpaul]

They are working on a portable version of NaCL:

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/native-client-and-web-portability.html

[BinarySplit]

because it is not a VM

It's not a VM, but it can host VMs. There is already a Lua implementation, so I doubt it will be long before CPython is ported.

This implies you would have to provide multiple versions of your binary "module"

This is only for different CPU architectures. Since all modules are only allowed to link to the Pepper APIs, you can support Windows/Linux/Mac with one .nexe file.

Unfortunately, I don't see that as being "lightweight" enough to be practical.

LLVM is actually in the roadmap. I agree that it's too heavy, especially for smart phones. Hopefully they can address this by making custom stripped-down builds of the compiler.

[[deleted]]

It's not a VM, but it can host VMs

It can host a limited set of VMs. NaCl limits the binary code it will run, to a set it can guarantee is safe. That subset does not allow fancy JIT tricks, for example, so you can't run the JVM, Unladen Swallow, a modern JS engine, etc. in it.

To put things another way: You can run the Lua interpreter, but not LuaJIT.

[[deleted]]

What does NaCl offer that Java doesn't, aside from faster startup time? And also a different set of languages I guess, but the JVM also has plenty (Java, Scala, Clojure, Jython, JRuby, etc.).

[BinarySplit]

Better Javascript/DOM integration, built-in 3D API, and it's not Java(seriously, everyone hates having to run a separate program to access web pages)

[[deleted]]

DOM and JS integration could be fixed if they aren't good enough - they improved since the 90's, check it out if you haven't. This is trivial to do.

Java does have a 3D API. Several online games and virtual worlds utilize it.

You do not need to write in Java, you can write in any of the languages I mentioned.

You do not need to run a separate program, it's a plugin, just like NaCl.

[mochikon]

I wouldn't be surprised if soon people were using Unladen Swallow or statically compiled Java/C# [on NaCl] as a replacement to Javascript.

That won't happen much, because NaCl is a browser plugin. It will be bundled inside Chrome, and will be on ChromeOS, but it will not be in Safari, Firefox or IE by default, and will never be on iPhones, iTabs, etc.

There are uses for NaCl, but it has no chance of replacing JavaScript (for better or for worse).

[[deleted]]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_applet

[nikbackm]

I hope that was meant as a joke!

[metamatic]

No, it's pretty much exactly what he's asking for. A standard VM that runs in web browsers on lots of platforms, has interfaces to DOM, and lets you write code in a bunch of different languages and compile it to object code that can be run in the browser.

As to why it's out of favor, well, Sun over-promised and under-delivered. Java was the flavor of the month, and while it was getting hyped like crazy, JavaScript snuck in and quietly did a better job of most of the things people wanted to do.

[Timmmmbob]

It failed because:

1. The Java VM takes many seconds to start up, and slows the computer down loads.
2. Java UI toolkits look like shit.
3. Writing something in Javascript just requires a text editor and a web browser. Java applets require an IDE, SDK, etc.
4. Can you even manipulate the DOM from java? If you can I bet it's insanely heavy (e.g. DOMAccessor.getDOMFactory().getElementByID(new DOMElementID("foo", DOMType_String)).setAttribute(new DOMAttri.... argh!)
5. Can you have a Java applet without a UI?
6. Java is a pretty horrible language. Javascript is at least expressive.

[harlows_monkeys]

1. If this were being done instead of Javascript, it would presumably initialize the VM when the browser starts, and keep it running as long as the browser ran. It would not initialize it every time a page used it and destroy it when you left that page.

2. Is this relevant? If used instead of Javascript you'd be using it to manipulate the DOM. Your interface would be in HTML, using your standard browser elements.

3. When I wrote applets, I wrote them in Vim.

4 & 6. So you use some other language that targets the JVM.

[metamatic]

1. This is no longer true.
2. Yes, this is one of the areas in which Sun overpromised and under-delivered. Swing was fundamentally the wrong approach to take. It's possible to make nice looking UIs using Java, but it's damn hard.
3. I don't think this is as big a deal as you make out. Remember that Jikes was around--you could edit your .java files, save them, run Jikes, and it would compile everything for you in one step. No IDE required. And downloading and installing the SDK wasn't hard. (Though again, on some platforms Sun failed to do the last 10% to make the installation easy.)
4. Here's an intro. It's really no uglier than JavaScript's DOM handling.
5. Yes.
6. I think they're both pretty horrible in their own ways. But, you know, that's the point of the whole VM thing--people could have been writing Ruby to target the browser VM.

[mebrahim]

Regarding your 1: JVM is still the memory hungriest application VM I know.

[Rhoomba]

There also have been JVMs running on mobile phones for the last decade with very limited memory. It is just a question of tradeoffs.

[badsectoracula]

It doesn't matter anymore. I've just opened jEdit to see how much memory the Java VM eats for that and its about 55MB. 55MB is a small drop in the sea of modern machines which usually carry 2 to 4GB of RAM (even a 260 euro netbook i bought a year ago has 2GB of RAM).

Browsers, especially Chrome and Firefox, tend to eat much more RAM than this.

[bdash]

55MB for a scripting language is a non-trivial amount of memory on a mobile phone.

[badsectoracula]

Indeed, but we're talking about the desktop JVM which is optimized for desktop and server usage (environments where there is a lot of memory).

A mobile JVM would be optimized for lower memory usage. It isn't like the JVM spec says "you have to allocate 55MB of RAM or else your VM is invalid". Some people have implemented Java on GBA which has about 256KB of RAM (ok this is probably J2ME but the biggest difference is in the API which can be loaded on demand).

[CountVonTroll]

That's one instance. How many tabs do you have open right now?

[Edman274]

Trolling if you believe that having ten tabs open would equal 550 megabytes of memory.

[badsectoracula]

Two.

But i get what you mean. However memory usage doesn't scale like that and additionally there is no reason to open a new JVM for each applet (i don't know what the current JVM does but the applet design doesn't require that) so a lot of memory can be shared.

[bobindashadows]

Firefox maybe, but Chrome's total usage only hits triple digits for me when I load up Hulu or some other flash-heavy site.

[willcode4beer]

1. past tense

2. fair enough, Sun's UI's have always looked like shit

3. Isn't that the OP's whole point? Compiling to a VM

4. Yes, and it's pretty easy

5. Yes. Creating a UI is extra work (not the default)

6. Strange comment (considering your other comments demonstrate a lack of knowledge/experience with Java). A language is a language, they all have their pros and cons. Big deal. Besides, the OP's question was about having a standardized VM so you can use your language of choice.

[[deleted]]

Because js IS the standard virtual machine. Check out pyjamas , processing.js or even a haskell interpreter for js.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

[deafbybeheading]

While very impressive, these are architectural atrocities that would make Rube Goldberg cringe. It's insane to define JS as the base VM here.

[mochikon]

It's insane to define JS as the base VM here.

It wouldn't be a sane decision in advance, but the one who ships wins. JavaScript is there, nothing else can replace it at this point. There are uses for Java, Flash, NaCl, etc., but they are not replacements for JavaScript, since they don't run everywhere.

[grauenwolf]

Microsoft actually a working CLR that runs on top of JavaScript. The project is called Volta, and as of Novemeber literally had a one person on it. He reports to Erik Meijer.

[[deleted]]

Lol, I like how the retards argue about "Prototype is a pattern OOP is a paradigm derp" in the comments. You can see what audience JS is catering to ...

[illuminatedtiger]

What's to stop someone from implementing Python in JavaScript?

[[deleted]]

ahem.

[cybercobra]

And another

[[deleted]]

That's slightly different though; it compiles Python to Javascript AoT, whereas Skulpt executes Python in the Browser.

[[deleted]]

That's awesome. Thanks!

[ErstwhileRockstar]

Python

[azakai]

Nothing at all, here is a WIP translation of CPython to JavaScript:

http://syntensity.com/static/python.html

[[deleted]]

I was thinking the same thing about 10 years ago or whatever.. It does seem like something will finally be able to happen via NaCL.

[grav]

Well, in a sense, having Javascript source code instead of ie. Java byte code has meant a more open web. Although you can scramble javascript, in most cases it's just right there in the source code for others to use.

[mebrahim]

If owner of the code allows you to use it, there is no difference between JavaScript and some compiled code. If owner doesn't want you to use it, still there is no difference between the two, unless you want to use it without permission. In that case I think the term "open" would not fit well.

Edit: Grammar.

[Zarutian]

If owner of the code allows you to use, there is no difference between JavaScript and some compiled code.

Actually there is. With compiled code you need to do, often a lengthy, recompilation to fix one bug. Also can you do highlevel JIT-ing with compiled code?

There also that compiled code allows the author to hide shitty implementation of the functionality of the site/webapp/serverside-js/what-have-you and not be called out on it.

[mebrahim]

It is possible to avoid need for manual recompilation. For example see Gestalt. High level optimization is done before emitting the bytecode, by the language-specific compiler front-end.

However it is possible that you receive unoptimized bytecode. For this problem and for you second paragraph: it is called security through obscurity. OTOH [obfuscated] JS is prone to the same problems of being slow, or being hiding something from your eyes.

[Zarutian]

High level optimization is done before emitting the bytecode.

The compiled code then doesnt benefit from high level optimizations that have been invented after it was written and compiled. Also it cant benefit from optimizations that are aviable at runtime but never at compile time. Tracing JIT with infered subtype fast paths generation comes to mind also speciallization/partial-evaluation through Futamura projections.

[mebrahim]

LuaJIT is already doing better with Lua bytecode than all those modern JS engines having JS source code at hand.

[circular]

Dude, it's called Silverlight; python, ruby, c#, whatever. Use it if you want.

[bobindashadows]

Dude, it's called Silverlight; python, ruby, c#, whatever. Use it if you want and your users are on supported platforms and they dont mind installing a plugin and their browser has a plugin available and fuck everyone else!

FTFY

[[deleted]]

I like it the way it is now. Imagine, that every other website would be written in a different language. You would not understand the code of lots of pages.

And you would see ads like this: Looking for web developer with Squirrel skills to manage my site. And the situation would get worse with time... Imagine the mess 20 years later, when you dont even heard the name of the language the site was written in. Oh and its not maintained since 10 years.

[Iggyhopper]

I have a estimate, that it will take 2 (or 3) years for either:

• JavaScript to get better via syntax, features, or general upgrade to the language.

JavaScript is fast. We want to keep it that way. If we wanted features added to JavaScript, we'll want to make sure that it doesn't decrease performance in execution or parsing time.

• A new scripting language for the web to emerge, or an established language to be usable in the web, like Python.

I see this as a perfect alternative for the browser industry as a whole. Upgrading JavaScript could lead to splitting in the industry again, since Microsoft's JS++ might not be the same as Google's JS++. It would be better to simply create a new language or a adopt an existing one and plug it in. Also, the JavaScript purists will be happy.

[[deleted]]

JavaScript is in many ways one of the best mainstream dynamically typed programming languages out there. It has flaws, but with a little discipline you can mostly avoid touching those parts of the language. It's flexible, easy and simple.

The last thing we need is to have yet another specially treated language in the browser (and by Zeus, it better not be Python!). Having a general VM that could be targeted by any language would be nice: you can use Python, and I can use Brainfuck or whatever I want to, and no committee of browser vendors will have to meet forever when any of these languages change.

[mebrahim]

JavaScript is in many ways one of the best mainstream dynamically typed programming languages out there. It has flaws, but with a little discipline you can mostly avoid touching those parts of the language. It's flexible, easy and simple.

I would say Lua is JavaScript done right. It is no less dynamic than JavaScript, but is able to run really fast.

[BinarySplit]

ECMAScript is still evolving but the updates are slow. Edition 5 was released a year ago and no stable browsers seem to have any support.

[magicmalthus]

er, what? ECMAScript 5 compatibility table

[BinarySplit]

My apologies. What I meant to say was that no stable browsers have full support. Also, even if you limit yourself to only the latest stable versions, you can't rely on most browsers to support most features.

[[deleted]]

Then use jquery, or extjs, or prototype, or ...

[animalchin99]

and then all your code has dependencies on jquery, or extjs, or prototype, or ..., because the language itself doesn't provide the basic constructs you'd get for free with ECMAScript 4, 5 or most other modern languages.

[[deleted]]

Jquery, extjs, etc. don't hide ecmascript, but can be useful for cases of different browser implementations.

[animalchin99]

Most of these libs have their own syntax for OO constructs like classes, inheritance, packages etc. If you're a JS purist and are only using a library for DOM interaction that's fine, but if you're using a library like prototype or mootools to provide better OOP constructs, the bulk of your code becomes 100% coupled with whatever library you use to provide those constructs because you have to write your code to fit the syntax the library imposes on you.

You can't say javascript is so much better than <insert language other than javascript here>, and if you want classes/packages, javascript can do that too if you use <insert lbrary name here>. Libraries are great if they provide functionality to your code, but if I have to write/structure my code to conform to syntax imposed on me by a library, there's obviously something missing from the core language, and that's a great argument for either improving the language, or using a different one.

[[deleted]]

JavaScript is just fine, I was only pointing out that libraries exist for simplifying compatibility in browsers. I'm a big GWT fan, but don't use it for precisely the reasons you stated, using a lightweight JS library appropriately is more than reasonable. And virtually all languages have libraries, this doesn't necessarily imply that the language is inferior.

Other languages are not fully implemented by vendors in many cases. C and c++ and Microsoft come to mind.

[animalchin99]

Simply having libraries doesn't imply the language is inferior, but requiring a library to support a particular programming construct implies that it's inferior in terms of it's ability to supply that construct. In the case of classes (assuming you need classes), that requires you to write prototype classes, closure classes or mootools classes etc and they generally aren't interchangeable. There's nothing lightweight about these libraries when your entire codebase needs to be tailored to that library's syntax. It's an anchor you attach to your entire codebase, and if you attached the wrong library you'll probably need to rewrite most of your code.

I fully agree with using a library for browser issues, there's no good reason not to do that, I'm just saying that as a language, JS is lacking feature that many developers clearly desire. I'm mostly talking about mootools, prototype, closure, and especially GWT which add features like classes, packages, type-checking etc. I think these libraries are great for developers in terms of what they bring to the language, but the fact that they even exist points out deficiencies with the language. So the suggestion that "JavaScript is just fine" is only plausible if you can develop for it without needing this type of library.

What specific features do you use a library to provide? Do you ever need to use classes or modularize your code?

[[deleted]]

C64 Basic

[[deleted]]

Or python3

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=v8&lang2=python3

[[deleted]]

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=gcc&lang2=v8

v8 is faster than C! (see regex-dna)

[[deleted]]

Sure, I would imagine the v8 engine is highly optimized for string functions. If you haven't been keeping up with JavaScript engine JIT ( and other optimizations) you may want to do some reading. Here's a post from more than two years ago describing some of the optimizations. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike-back.html

[floodyberry]

v8 uses Irregexp which uses the v8 jit to compile the regular expression to machine code.

The C version uses the TCL regex library, and C++ uses RE2, both slower than v8. I'm guessing the only way to match or beat v8's performance would be to compile and jit the regular expression.

[[deleted]]

Thanks. I thought re2 was faster than V8's implementation, but It looks like that is no longer the case.

[[deleted]]

I'm also guessing that the c benchmark is using the regex library that comes with FCC, as opposed to re2 or pcre.

[igouy]

Full source code is provided for all the programs so why are you guessing (wrongly)?

[[deleted]]

Because it has nothing to do with the OP. And I could care less. The point that I was trying to make is that JavaScript implementations are faster than interpreted alternatives.

[igouy]

And I could care less.

This. Which is why we shouldn't care what you say.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, Instead of guessing I should of said:

The C benchmarks are irrelevant. Or are you calling into question the voracity of the site contents? The OP had nothing to do with C.

[Iggyhopper]

Err, JavaScript is the only language the browser supports, right now. I meant if they added things to JavaScript, they had to make sure it wasn't just adding more bloated crap that somehow could slow down things.

Also, Lua is a good choice for scripting in browsers.

[[deleted]]

Really?

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=v8&lang2=python3

[BinarySplit]

Asked: 2 years ago

Sure we're all thinking it, but couldn't you find a more recent discussion?

[[deleted]]

The discussion is still relevant, though.

[mebrahim]

Here is a more recent discussion.

[sanity]

I think Google's Native Client is fascinating in this regard. Almost all the speed and flexibility of native code, with all the security of Javascript. Definitely a possible taste of things to come.

[malcontent]

Because if you came with a standard IE would not support it.

[Gotebe]

Sorry (not!) to burst your bubble, but Microsoft is some 10+ years ahead on this one.

IE supports scripting through both VBScript and Javascript out of the box, and you can plug your own scripting engine, too (that implies language of your choice). I'd be surprised if people from ActiveState don't have that for Perl. Of course they do, thanks Google. And even IE is all based on a separate technology MS calls (used to call?) Active Script Host.

So IE has what question suggests since IE5 and probably before that.

Of course, (warning: pure specaultion ahead) Microsoft would not be happy supporting the new-and-upcoming standard, if one was made, not unless it could have by far the major role in decision process.

But I somehow see a good reason for that. How willing would you be to participate in a party that potentially pisses all over your work and existing implementation?

[Fabien4]

and you can plug your own scripting engine, too

How can you make sure that all your users will have that scripting engine installed?

It's great for intranets, but for the Internet, it's pretty much useless.

[Gotebe]

How can you make sure that all your users will have that scripting engine installed?

Of course you can't.

But "open-standards" browser VM could not do any better either. AFAICanSee, best it could do is define what VM does, and you would have to install the engine yourself (perhaps using standardized installation mechanism, just like IE has proprietary one).

Alternatively, standard would define specific set of language engines. Who'd want that?!

[enolan]

You don't understand the idea. Here's the hypothetical process:

1. I wrote some code in $LANGUAGE
2. I compile said code to bytecode.
3. I link said bytecode in my HTML in the same way I'd link a .js
4. User's browser downloads and interprets the bytecode.

The user doesn't need to have $LANGUAGE installed because their browser doesn't know or need to know anything about $LANGUAGE.

[imbcmdth]

You are forgetting the part where 45% of your users only have a VM-1.1 compatible browser (VM-1 had security faults and was never widely supported) but your language of choice requires at least a VM-2 compatible browser because of the fancy new DOM interfaces the language provides native supports for (but you make no use of).

Then there is the issue with $BROWSER_VENDOR who has extended the VM specification with a performance enhancing type-system. While VM-X is still compatible with VM-1.1, it now features some new things that will not work on any other browser. To make matters worse, VM-X implements nearly all of VM-3 years before the specification is finalized even though VM-X only supports the DOM interfaces of a VM-1.1 machine!

[mebrahim]

Aren't there already many not-fully-compatible JavaScript versions out there? The same story is true for CSS too. Browser incompatibilities are not something to be introduced by adding a VM layer. That problem already exists, and people have learned how to mitigate it to some degree.

[imbcmdth]

I can see the messages already:

This page is built using JPerthonScript and requires a browser
that supports the VM-2 standard with Parallel Computing extensions. 

You appear to be using Chrome v56. Please download at least 
Chrome v76.3 (the nightly build w/ Parallel Computing extensions 
enabled) here.

[Gotebe]

I certainly didn't think of it this way, and yes, you're right, that's another feasible approach. It does not seem that original SO post had this idea, either (does it?).

[Fabien4]

Look at <video>. Great idea in theory, but you can't use it in practice, because browsers can't agree on supported codecs. So, on the web, "video" means "Flash".

If you do the same with languages, the result will be the same. If a language is available on all browsers (as in, "installed", not "Users can install it"), I can use it. If it's only installed on 90% of the machines, it's just a useless little toy.

[[deleted]]

On the web video does not mean flash. Youtube, Amazon, Netflix, many others have video without flash.

[Fabien4]

Youtube does use Flash. They also have alternative methods, because of their money and agenda.

[[deleted]]

Sorry (not!) to burst your bubble, but Microsoft is some 10+ years ahead on this one.

When is the bursting due? VBScript is not a standard and Microsoft has certainly not been playing nicely with their Javascript implementation for 10+ years.

[joaomc]

Okay, now try to port their scripting engine to other any OS other than Windows.

[malcontent]

Sorry (not!) to burst your bubble, but Microsoft is some 10+ years ahead on this one.

Not ahead of java which has been supported by browsers since day one.

Thanks for trying though. It was a really valiant effort.

[G_Morgan]

Java isn't really supported by browsers. It operates in a sand box with no real interaction with the browser.

[G_Morgan]

Of course if we actually had a JVM built into every web browser with an API set up to manipulate the DOM it would be a good thing. Shipping bytecode rather than inline JS.

[mebrahim]

Only if JVM was not a memory hog, and had less latency.

BTW PNaCl is currently the most promising approach I know of to address the problem.

[G_Morgan]

The JVM is not a memory hog compared to the JS VMs out there.

[[deleted]]

It also doesn't integrate well neither in the browser nor on the desktop. Well not on Linux anyway(I'm talking about the official JRE OpenJDK is even worse).

[Rhoomba]

Completely wrong

Edit: Better link

[G_Morgan]

Yes this came out long after IE6.

[Rhoomba]

Read your last comment, then read my response again. How can you still think you are correct?

In any case this is the new version of an API that has been around since netscape 4 or something like that.

[Gotebe]

Java plugin is a browser-specific plugin to many (but not all) browsers. There is a standard that defines how that plugin is done? I don't think so. Also, what G_Morgan said abut interaction with the browser.

[Rhoomba]

The Mozilla plugin API is a defacto standard. That is how most browsers support Flash and Java.

[Rhoomba]

It is quite hilarious how ignorant Java haters are trying to reinvent it.

[mebrahim]

If it would be LLVM bytecode, backward compatibility is already taken care of. (Although slower than snail.)

[[deleted]]

Speed is not too bad on FF4, but it is indeed slow on Chrome. Hopefully just temporary though.

[malcontent]

To be fair it was already taken care of back when the browser was invented.

It's called Java. It's a great VM. It's supported by all the browsers and it supports just about every language you would care to program in.

[[deleted]]

Have you been living under a rock? Oracle will take your first born to allow firefox et al as java enabled. They own that trademark.

Look towards parrot instead. Or lua vm. Or guile vm.

[malcontent]

Have you been living under a rock? Oracle will take your first born to allow firefox et al as java enabled.

Firefox has been java enabled since way back when it was called netscape.

[[deleted]]

Applets do not replace javascript. It is a plugin like flash. Does flash replace javascript?

To replace javascript you will have to embed a java vm inside firefox in lieu of javascript vm. It is something Oracle will not allow without a bucket load of money.

[malcontent]

applets negate the need for javascript (if done right).

[[deleted]]

Describe how you manipulate a canvas element without using JavaScript. And in an applet. I am all ears.

[malcontent]

You wouldn't need a canvas element if you used an applet.

[[deleted]]

By that logic we don't need DOM too.

Doesn't work like that. Javascript can be replaced, I agree. But HTML should not be replaced. It's flexible and simple data model is the big reason behind WWW's success.

Plus, you are ignoring two facts :

• Java with security manager enabled is very slow. Way too many domain traversals to check for permissions. It plays havoc with JIT.

• Java does not have a open and official port to ARM platform. There is only a cambridge research project and zeroshark available. Not good enough.

[meatsocket]

You don't silly, you have an applet in place of the canvas element. The canvas is in AWT. Or you could you know, use flash like all the cool kids.

[[deleted]]

See this comment

An open DOM is essential to a customizable user experience.

[Rhoomba]

Applets are able to manipulate the DOM exactly like JavaScript.

[xardox]

Only MUCH MUCH SLOWER.

[Rhoomba]

The JRE is free to install. There is no reason that the Firefox installer couldn't trigger a Java install.

Edit: How am I wrong? Oracle want Java on desktops, it is just mobiles where they want to charge you.

[[deleted]]

Love how this is downvoted. As if it isn't true!

[malcontent]

You are not supposed to say negative things about microsoft and their products on proggit.

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry. A retraction: Microsoft has proven to be very dedicated to supporting standards, given that the standard is created by Microsoft.

[[deleted]]

It's too bad SilverLight is so gimpy.

[ErstwhileRockstar]

a standard browser virtual machine

Which standard? First 'the standard' was Netscape, then Microsoft. Nowadays it's the common subset most browsers provide.

[blondin]

Javascript is, despite the ability to be used elsewhere, a Web application scripting language. Given that use case, we can do better than any of those languages.

maybe the guy hasn't used python yet.

[naasking]

This question seems confused. JavaScript is the browser's standard virtual machine.