Why don't they implement Python and Ruby on the web browsers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why don't they implement Python and Ruby on the web browsers?

#141

Post by chollida1 » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 7:48 PM UTC

aiscott wrote: post #39

chollida1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's as cut and dry as that. What if we do have a general purpose vm. Doesn't each browser still need to implement language compilers for all languages to that vm? ie what if Microsoft supports langauge foo but not language baz. Chrome supports language baz but not foo and Mozilla only supports their own proprietary language. All of which compile to the common vm. How do websites written for IE work on…

Servers could serve compiled byte code. Someody else already mentioned that compiling python or ruby to JavaScript could be an option. We already have clojurescript which does this.

Doh, you are of course correct. I'm not sure how I didn't think of this :)

Re: Why don't they implement Python and Ruby on the web browsers?

#142

Post by GigabyteCoin » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 10:04 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #140

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: "The site is used for problem solving." So says YOU. What's so inherently wrong with letting the people decide? Obviously, a few hundred people found that post quite relevant to the website's topic, helpful, and interesting. What gives Casper the right to destroy hundreds of people's discussion on a topic that they all deem relevant. The "vote" on that action was approximately 300 to 1. That 1 vote of no confiden…

Not everything is subjective. Stack Overflow has a stated purpose, and that purpose is not "whatever the most people feel like disussing." The Internet has proven that cats and politics will win that one every time.

The topic in question is not so far removed from the site's purpose to deem that it's "whatever the most people feel like discussing".

You are correct in that somebody must draw some kind of line somewhere in the sand... but I believe that Somebody jumped the gun on this one, as they have on many of my questions to similar websites in the past.

I think it's more of an elitist thing. "I know the exact rules better than you know the exact rules."

When a user needs to know and abide by every rule of every website on the net, the internet is immediately less interesting.

Re: Why don't they implement Python and Ruby on the web browsers?

#143

Post by mixmastamyk » Sun, Dec 18, 2011, 6:54 AM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #127

mixmastamyk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've looked at it, and while nifty, makes me worry about leaky abstractions and future support. Now that you mention it if I'm going to do that, why not use the python-to-javascript compiler from pyjamas? ... hmm.

The difference is that CF is very close to javascript and makes it very easy to transition. But of course, if you prefer python, why not :) Talking about future support, as CF is included in Rails 3.1, I guess that it should be guaranteed enough.

I looked in to it. While technically possible it looks like you'll have to include a script to implement the python-like objects. That's a bit more than I wanted, just to write javascript in python syntax... so I guess it's not very practical.

Re: Why don't they implement Python and Ruby on the web browsers?

#144

Post by chc » Sun, Dec 18, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #142

chc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is subjective. Stack Overflow has a stated purpose, and that purpose is not "whatever the most people feel like disussing." The Internet has proven that cats and politics will win that one every time.

The topic in question is not so far removed from the site's purpose to deem that it's "whatever the most people feel like discussing". You are correct in that somebody must draw some kind of line somewhere in the sand... but I believe that Somebody jumped the gun on this one, as they have on many of my questions to similar websites in the past. I think it's more of an elitist thing. "I know the exact rules better tha…

You referred to the number of votes the post got. I was saying that's a red herring. Given a choice between a great question about the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of a feature in Clojure 1.4 and a picture of a cat in front of a computer, several orders of magnitude more people would vote for the cat than the programming question. This is why getting a lot of votes doesn't really prove relevance.

As for "I know the exact rules better than you know the exact rules": I don't see that at all. The rules are pretty simple. Here's a summary — if you follow it, you will not get your question locked:

1. Is it about programming?

2. Is it possible to give an objectively correct answer?

3. Is it stated politely?

In the particular case of this question, it doesn't even try to follow #2. It's an interesting question, I agree, but there's no right answer, so it's not a good Stack Overflow question. S:N ratio is extremely important on a site like Stack Overflow (because the people who answer questions well lose interest fast when they can't find good questions to answer, and vice-versa), so it is important to make sure that the site sticks closely to its purpose.

Incidentally, this isn't true of Wikipedia. Some of its rules make the site better, but a lot of the rules exist more for their own sake than because not following them would ruin the site (e.g. an article that's just descriptions of Pokemon episodes is pretty useless, but it doesn't make the article on Afghanistan less useful).