My boss is giving up on Silverlight (Thanks PDC 10)

@fanbaby: Personally, my concern is that, regardless of whether you do or don't like Javascript as a language, having only one language to develop in is a step back from other platforms that are designed such that anyone can write a compiler that converts whatever language they like (or a new, ground-breaking language they invent) to a bytecode or native code. Choice (and room for innovation) > no choice.

However, the GWT (and for F#, WebSharper) approach of compiling languages to JS itself is interesting. I'm worried that, because JS is designed to be a high-level language rather than a compiler target, it may not work as well for the latter purpose. At least, compilers targeting JS still seem to be a lot rarer than compilers targeting other platforms, which makes me wonder why. But I haven't given it serious thought, actually one of my plans for the near future is to look into this more (and delve more into studying compilers in general).

one of the problems of 'JS as an IL' is that JS has no GOTO !

as Douglas Crockford said :

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-yuiconf2009-state

Douglas: Yeah! So that is where the world is starting to go to run their programs. If you're writing a compiler and you're trying to translate some language into JavaScript and your language has control structures that don't map onto JavaScript's control structures, then it gets hard to write good code. They've been asking us to do things like add 'goto' to the language. Now, most of you are too young to remember but the computer industry spend 20 years trying to figure out if 'goto' was a good thing or not, and we've finally figured out that it's not and managed to eliminate it. I don't want to be bringing it back, I think that would be a terrible thing. Even if it made it easier for them, the ninjas will jump all over it and go 'oh look, I think I can make my program go faster'. Maybe they will or maybe they won't, but they'll be writing really bad code and it'll be our fault, so we don't want to do that.

Gilad Bracha mentioned a bunch more problems here, and as he said, the people who writes JS themselves and the people who writes compilers targetting JS want different things in for this language:

http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/charles/a-conversation-with-gilad-bracha

maybe you can have a look on this IL2JS thing:

http://smp.if.uj.edu.pl/~mkol/il2js/

2 hours ago, contextfree wrote

@fanbaby: Personally, my concern is that, regardless of whether you do or don't like Javascript as a language, having only one language to develop in is a step back from other platforms that are designed such that anyone can write a compiler that converts whatever language they like (or a new, ground-breaking language they invent) to a bytecode or native code. Choice (and room for innovation) > no choice.

However, the GWT (and for F#, WebSharper) approach of compiling languages to JS itself is interesting. I'm worried that, because JS is designed to be a high-level language rather than a compiler target, it may not work as well for the latter purpose. At least, compilers targeting JS still seem to be a lot rarer than compilers targeting other platforms, which makes me wonder why. But I haven't given it serious thought, actually one of my plans for the near future is to look into this more (and delve more into studying compilers in general).

It seems GWT is working well for Google, though other then the discontinued Wave, i don't know which products use it.

Don't forget about the Closure Library, also from Google. It's a 100% javascript library geared towards big projects. Gmail uses it!! It includes a standalone minifier, you can even use it with a .net project

About JS, yes, it's NOT a class-based language like virtually all current 'normal' ones. It's a almost a lone example of prototype-based lang. Some (Crockford) say it's even useable as is

@fanbaby:

There are many things are restrictedly not avalible in DOM because it is called "Document" Object Model for a reason. Like I said, you can make a super fancy interactive document, but, it is still a document. Unless HTML commitee stop calling it a document and treat HTML as more than a document, it is still a document. For example, there is no Grid control because it is a document. You can build your own Grid, but, they are simply not as clean as the real Grid. You can do all sorts of hacks to enable rich interactive document, but, at its core, it is focused on being a document. And their mentality of HTML being a document is their decision, not mine.

Same can be said to WPF when it doesn't have enough native controls in the initial release, such as TreeMenu. Certainly everyone can make their own control, but, that's not what devs want.

10 hours ago, fanbaby wrote

*snip*

HUH? Tell that to Google (docs, gmail), Facebook, Yahoomail, Hotmail, Microsoft Office web.

Granted, you might argue that a small shop doesn't have the resources of these companies. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be your customer if you ignore what is going on right now in the web, and you keep pushing SL. It seems you are not learning the so called "complicated" web stack because it's too hard.

It seems SL fans are dissing JavaScript/HTML4/CSS (not even 5) in an attempt to win hearts to SL. They still hope the world will come beating: "Yea, you're right. The (open) web is * for apps, we'll hire you to do our next $5M project in SL." The only prob is it's not happening. So please stop. Dissing JS or the web-stack just say something about your abilities.

Check out other technologies. Hear Douglas Crockford talk about JS. Google opened most of their web tools, look into those: GWT (yea, Java...spooky), closure lib, svgweb, many more....

BTW, the rhetoric against HTML/CSS/JS is just getting loader as SL fans are getting desperate. It started with "JS is harder then SL", then "it's POS", then "I'll rather kill myself before developing with that". Sorry for not bringing references. It should be a good read.

Well said! I've been saying similar things before but not as well as you.

4 hours ago, fanbaby wrote

*snip*

It seems GWT is working well for Google, though other then the discontinued Wave, i don't know which products use it.

Don't forget about the Closure Library, also from Google. It's a 100% javascript library geared towards big projects. Gmail uses it!! It includes a standalone minifier, you can even use it with a .net project

About JS, yes, it's NOT a class-based language like virtually all current 'normal' ones. It's a almost a lone example of prototype-based lang. Some (Crockford) say it's even useable as is

The thing is because JavaScript is dynamic, you can do the same kind of OO/polymorphism and other fanciness without the boilerplate crap needed in static languages (eg: "interfaces"). People who keep asking for the "class/interface" keyword(s) in JavaScript are missing the point. I don't understand the constant sh!t talking about this language which is arguably one of simpler and powerful languages out there. Maybe because the tooling isn't as developed? Or people who just don't understand developing using dynamic languages.

I know my project uses GWT extensively and it's not because we are "scared" of JavaScript (only an idiot would be), it's because GWT allows you to make really beautiful interfaces with minimal code. It's amazing with 100 lines of code what you can do in GWT. It also integrates really well with Spring MVC and Spring Security. It also lets you reuse some of the Java code you have lying around which is nice.