We've been lied to: JavaScript is fast

I should also add a massive asterisk to "never slow", clarifying that it's usually within a couple of orders of magnitude of compiled code, and faster than that for glue language tasks that let it call native code for the heavy lifting.

Javascript is very fast, but what is not fast is the frameworks that use it or the ways people use those frameworks. If people with similarly minded thinking as those who develop desktop only apps with native languages, would write javascript only apps, I would say the performance would be very close.

But many developers have no understanding of how to write performant code, as they have used to just using some heavy frameworks that handle all that stuff for you, so easily you become limited by that thinking.

That is at least my view into this world, where naive web-developers who have like 2 years of software development can get to deploy stuff to production. Iteration speeds need to be fast, so a lot more people are employed without the skills to really understand what is happening, thus resulting in poorly executed services. Or maybe it's just not a priority.

Also, many technically inclined people just don't get it, that what is important is that you can execute a function, the speed is not really so important in the end, even though we would like it to be. We tend to live in a bubble, those who have dwelled deeper into the operating ways of computers, that we think that everybody else is like that too, or should be.

Many are just doing their jobs, and that does not include learning how a CPU or memory works, but it might be limited to learning how a Vue.js framework works or how to use React.

Also, why ignore memory usage and JS VM startup time? Why ignore the massive dependency tree that comes with JS frameworks? There's multiple factors to consider when assessing language performance. JS is far less efficient than other languages...but that's honestly fine. There are plenty of use cases for the language where your application doesn't have to be incredibly performant.

Nonsense. There's nothing wrong with the graphics you can run on the web. Web games flourished before the iPhone. And it seems safe to assume that they died because of the iPhone.

It was a horrific development in the space, since mobile games differ from flash games in being (1) more expensive and (2) worse.

But the thing is that Java is pretty close to native. Primitive types, object allocation, threads etc. all correlate almost directly to how CPUs and OSs work. So you get a sense of performance and what's expensive/isn't.

With JavaScript there are so many complex abstractions and constructs it's really hard to get a sense of what the final ASM will look like in an optimal case. Unfortunately, some Java changes (e.g. Valhalla) aim to bring some of that lack of clarity into Java. Still, thanks to typing and a simpler syntax Java is MUCH better positioned here than JavaScript.