On Mar 20, 2008, at 10:56 PM, ToolmakerSteve98 wrote:
After a rough look at the size of the language grammar and spec, and
perusing some of the past mail discussions about subtleties in
parsing/analyzing certain constructs -- WHOA - this is stuff we
take for
granted on our multi-GHz and GB desktop PCs today,
I think you need evidence to justify your gut ("WHOA") reaction. I'll
be first to admit we need evidence to prove the incremental cost of
ES4 over ES3 is not excessive, but participants in Ecma TC39 who
believe this can be done are targeting mobile devices and working on
real, small footprint implementations right now (e.g. ESC plus
Tamarin Tracing). Anyway, whatever the jump in JS evolution (ES3.1,
ES4), IMHO there's no "third" way that forces a static language and
offline/AOT compilation.
but ES4 would
web-standardize a language that would require every web client to
take on
that burden.
Browsers have to handle today's JS plus several other content
languages and image formats, with video and audio coming. Life in the
big city. The CPU budget should not go up significantly due to ES4
features, and compiled and burned-into-ROM code footprint may shrink
if we make the right self-hosting trades. But we have to prove this,
as noted above.
My gut reaction is that Microsoft has taken a better tack: let
this stuff be resolved at authoring time down to a CLR. Don't
burden every
web client device with it.
That's not the web, sorry. JavaScript is and will remain a web source
language for the foreseeable future. The Ecma TG1 (now TC39) group
charged with maintaining and improving its standard is not going to
throw it out and require a CLR-like VM and standardized interchange
bytecode. Nor are web developers going to switch horses (really, ride
both old and new horses) like that in significant numbers, from what
I can see.
That's why I ask about "compact" subset. I'm initially skeptical
that what
I'm seeing is the right next step for the web.
You may not have heard from many people (see my blog for some
comments from them) who think a statically typed language that must
be compiled ahead of time is the wrong thing for the web. Opinions
vary, but it's clear there is no practical way to move web browsers
and content en masse to such a model in anything like the timeframe
contemplated for ES4. Such a move seems obviously a much bigger
effort than the ES4 effort.
But I think there are a lot
of good ideas here, so I'm working through it, looking for common
ground
between stuff I see at Microsoft and stuff I see here.
Why do you believe static typing is necessary for performance? Just
curious.
/be
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