Coding in web browsers

[andrewducker]

robhu has a good point over here.

At the moment we write Javascript in web pages, which is then compiled down by the various JIT methods that Firefox/IE/Webkit use to make it super fast.

Seeing as what's run clearly isn't the actual JS itself, but bytecode, why not have a standardised bytecode that all browsers would support, which would then mean you could write your code in any language you liked, providing there was a compiler to convert it to the standardised bytecode?

At the moment Google uses GWT to convert Java into Javascript that then gets converted into the running code, (And MS used to have something similar) wouldn't it be handy if the intermediate step wasn't necessary?

Comments

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

That would mean Apache etc having to know how to serve JS files...

[andrewducker]

I'm confused by what you mean there.

Apache does serve JS files - that line from earleir was taken from one of our reports here, and was importing a .js file from an apache server before I changed it...

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yes, but who would do the compiling?

I'm not doing it, the browser isn't doing it, so it's got to be the server....

[andrewducker]

I'm clearly being unclear here. The JS stuff would work _exactly_ the same way it does at the moment - it would be compiled by the browser's JS engine.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you've lost me. How is that different to what happens now? What's the benefit if it is -- the browser is still doing the work.

[andrewducker]

When it encounters:
<script type="byte/code" language="bytecode" src="http://myserver/somecode.byt"></script>
it will pass it to the bytecode interpreter to run.
When it encounters:
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://myserver/media/js/jquery.js"></script>
it will run it as it currently does through the JS interpreter.

The browser continues to do the work _for JS_, but allows you to write code in other languages if you so desire.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Right, so we are on the same page. So my question was -- who's going to make the bytecode?

[andrewducker]

Coders not using JS will make it with whatever tools they use.

Same as currently happens if you're using GWT or anything else which compiles into JS.

[figg.livejournal.com]

So,

people who write js can just write js

and people who write in something that compiles to js can compile to a different format instead