Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
andrewducker.livejournal.com
Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
1–10 of 187 posts
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#2It would improve script parsing speed but perhaps hinder the evolution of internals of the interpreters. Of course engines could always retranslate this standard bytecode in another internal representation and jits.
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#3[deleted]
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#4I tried to make this point in this submission:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790311
The fact that it also ranted about Javascript shifted the discussion though
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#5Google nativeclient might be a start... http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#6[deleted]
Is JS a good bytecode? Is compiling to it from Java about as efficient as compiling to a bytecode would be?
If so (within an order of magnitude, I'm not fussy), then that's awesome - I hadn't realised that things were so efficient.
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#7Google is already heading there with native client. They're changing the approach to serving up LLVM bytecode on the server, which is translated to x86 or ARM by the browser prior to execution. For future apps that require performance, it should work well and with Google's weight behind the tech I think it'll be widely adopted.
There's already a version of python that runs in native client, and pretty much anything could conceivably be ported.
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#8Do you remember Internet Explorer with VBScript?
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#9I really liked this comment (by khoth): "And once we have standardised bytecode, the next logical step would presumably be to improve performance by creating CPUs that can execute it directly. In 20 years we'll all be back where we started."
Re: Why are we limited to JS in browsers - would a bytecode standard help?
#10I really liked this comment (by khoth): "And once we have standardised bytecode, the next logical step would presumably be to improve performance by creating CPUs that can execute it directly. In 20 years we'll all be back where we started."
I believe some work went on to produce a Java-running chip at one point. It proved better to compile down to whatever suited the chip best.