Erik Meijer: JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web

Here's an interesting take on what HTML + JavaScript are becoming. This may give some insight into where Microsoft might be heading with its developer tools. It's doesn't seem so far-fetched to someday be able to develop using Silverlight or WPF and have VS generate HTML + CSS + JavaScript for you.

well, surely they are building some high-level RAD frameworks that can be designed by drag and drop then generate 'assembly' code for you, but converting XAML/C#/VB code into JS is another thing and quite unlikely as for now. Volta is not dead nor living

Microsoft better start coding because Java developers have been able to do this for years thanks to the Google Web Toolkit and GXT.

If performance allows it, I would rather see an IL to JS converter, not the translation of a specific language. One size doesn't fit all, and neither do two or three sizes... I wonder what would Chakra (or other highly optimizing JS engines) do in this case.

@Charles: interesting discussion, even though I find the basic point rather moot: JS is not necessarily the best language to act as an assembly language, but it's the only choice we have; it would take forever to have a viable alternative.

Also, I doubt that creating a new language on top of JS would solve much; any improvement is obviously welcome, but I think that the real game changer would be enabling a whole class of languages (as in all those implemented on .NET) to be used on the web. That's what would finally enable us to use the right tool for the job and get developers more likely to embrace the web as an application platform.

Just my 2 cents, of course...

P.S. and I got you red handed defining JS "a simple scripting language"

@Blue Ink: 

I talked about that in another post, it will be great if we can use any .net language on the web, so instead of HTML/JS it would be HTML/.Net.

With the compiler as a service (Roslyn) theoretically we could use C# code in the browser,.

When something like that happens i will give web development another try.

if JS is good for both high level programming and also compilation target, does that mean you can write code in JS then compile JS into JS ??

One of the Wired magazine cover is "web is dead". So, is web what we really want? Web isn't  cool anymore. HTML5 is far from cool.

My take on it is this is yet another "wow look at what us nerds can do" kind of thing rather than any meaningful new direction in programming. IMO, all of this positive talk coming out of Microsoft about JS and HTML5 is a smokescreen to cover up interdepartmental infighting. I've heard rumors that the WPF/Silverlight group doesn't play well with others. That would better explain this new direction windiv is taking away from the old mantras of "managed code" and "strongly typed is better". It's not like JS has been hiding under a rock for the past 20 years... Maybe they'll bring back VB Script too while their at it. I think I'm going to write some extentions for BasicA, build a JS compiler for it, and see if that catches on. Just think of it: great legacy support and future proof all in the same box with accessibility to countless programmers because Basic is so...well...um...basic.

@DeathByVisualStudio: I remember taking a few VBScript lessons several years ago and being told that it way going to take over the world

@vesuvius: As creepy as your old avatar was, I still liked it better.

@cbae: I will need to find it on my other machine that is dead at the ment.

People really just want to run binaries in the browser.  That's really the larger problem anyway.  You want to build a complex, highly engineered application, but the tools you're given suck, so you abstract them away.  It would be better off just bypassing markup and JS going straight to the framebuffer.

9 hours ago,Charles wrote

*snip*

It's not yet a great compiler target. I'm not sure the TC39 folks will spend much time on this aspect of the language. It is a good transpiler target, though (JS to JS).
C

Something like Caja ?

We've been able to compile c# into javascript for some time now;

http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp

So I think Erik has a point.

The rest is just rich v.s. reach. The richer you get, the less reach you get. If you want more reach, it will be less rich. Doesnt matter what platform you code on. It will boil back down to the crafts of the developer,.. And that me-sa likes,..