After writing an ES6->ES5 compiler, I've come to the conclusion that ES5 *is* an intermediary language. For dynamic, duck-typed languages it's not so bad.
I always found the Dart people's arguments the most persuasive: https://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/ Basically, any language bytecode will inevitably end up targeted at the language it was written for. From that point of view, a web-standard bytecode VM simply isn't feasible. Myself, I think the only bytecode suitable for the web is raw machine code. One you start abstracting away from the machine level, you inevitably end up designing your bytecode for your specific language use case. Of course, that would be tantamount to standardizing one CPU architecture for web applications, which is a terrible idea. Much better to stick with highly optimized scripting languages like Javascript and have everyone else stick to browser plugin SDKs and NativeClient. P.S.: There is a flaw in the Dart community's arguments. It is faster to compile to to and execute on a bytecode VM, even if it's a purely internal one. Or at least, it's faster to use jump tables for your virtual machine state code instead of function pointers. That's why simply executing the AST tree (which is, after all, much easier to code than coming up with an instruction set) is so rarely done (which is how Dart does it). On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 2:13 PM, David Bruant <[email protected]> wrote: > Le 14/05/2014 19:13, Axel Rauschmayer a écrit : > > What is the best “bytecode isn’t everything” article that exists? The “the > web needs bytecode” meme comes up incredibly often, I’d like to have > something good to point to, as an answer. > > This one looks good: > http://mozakai.blogspot.de/2013/05/the-elusive-universal-web-bytecode.html > > I want to suggest > https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript > I know it's not a direct answer to your question and I know the talk is > not 100% serious, but it builds on a trend about JavaScript that suggests > that JavaScript can be good enough as it is and a bytecode isn't needed. > This talk also contains bit and pieces of knowledge helping to understand > this trend. > > David > > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss > >
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