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Dark Ages would imply that progress was set back significantly by some catastrophic event (ie: the fall of Netscape). Renaissance would be a more apt term, give

Dark Ages would imply that progress was set back significantly by some catastrophic event (ie: the fall of Netscape). Renaissance would be a more apt term, given the rapid advances we're going through.

Teckla 13y ago
Dark Ages would imply that progress was set back significantly by some catastrophic event (ie: the fall of Netscape). Some of us would argue that JavaScript itself was that catastrophic event. No, really -- I'm not trolling. It's no longer reasonable for people to deny that JavaScript doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance. These Herculean efforts are impressive, but perhaps it's time to fix the language, even if that breaks backwards compatibility.
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  I've pretty much ignored javascript until this week. What exactly is wrong with it? Perhaps that is too broad. Can you give an example of something in javascript that impedes runtime performance optimization?
- aroman 13y ago
  They're working on it; it's called ES6. But in terms of your claim that "It's no longer reasonable for people to deny that JavaScript doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance", I'm not sure what to say to that. JavaScript code is some of the fastest interpreted code around, and projects like asm.js take that even farther. It's a phenomenally beautiful and expressive language once you get around the fact that it has some minor warts. I might have agreed with you 10 years ago, but I don't think there claim that JS simply doesn't lend itself to being performant is true at all -- all the evidence I see, both as a web JavaScript and Node.js developer, and following the recent relative news, has pointed me to quite the opposite: javascript is doing great right now.
  - munificent 13y ago
    > JavaScript code is some of the fastest interpreted code around, and projects like asm.js take that even farther. That says something about market forces, but nothing about the language. JavaScript is the fastest dynamic language because it was the language that was most profitable to optimize. We don't have any real-world comparisons to other languages where an equal amount of brainpower was spent on optimization so that we could see how the language itself affects things.
    - derefr 13y ago
      > We don't have any real-world comparisons to other languages where an equal amount of brainpower was spent on optimization so that we could see how the language itself affects things. Yes we do: Lua--optimized by lots of big brains for use in gaming. And it turns out that LuaJIT is much faster than any current Javascript JIT--with the reason frequently given that it is a much simpler language.
      - lucian1900 13y ago
        Also PyPy, which is generally about as fast as v8 on benchmarks.
        ksec 13y ago
        Not really.. https://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/performance-of-rust-and-dart-in-sudoku-solving/ https://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/performance...
      - simonster 13y ago
        By "lots of big brains," I think you mean Mike Pall :). But yeah, LuaJIT is really fast. Julia (http://julialang.org/ http://julialang.org/) is another dynamic language designed from the start for high performance, although the objectives are slightly different from those of Lua. While LuaJIT is fast at everything, Julia is really optimized so that running the same code many times is fast. Running a function the first time can be much slower than in other dynamic languages, I think because there is no baseline JIT or interpreter.
- VeejayRampay 13y ago
  I'm not too keen on the fact that for ALL programming tasks in ANY system you can pick amongst dozens of languages, but the web is still limited to just one. That is not modern at all. People need and demand choice, that web programming is still a monopoly to this day is bad, even though people do achieve tremendous things with Javascript every day.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- coldtea 13y ago
  >It's no longer reasonable for people to deny that JavaScript doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance. For a language that "doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance", it did far better than: Python, Ruby, Perl and most other dynamic languages...
  - codesuela 13y ago
    I think that is not a really fair comparison, Python with PyPy is pretty fast. Actually I would like to see a comparison for Python on PyPy vs JS in IonMonkey/V8. There was just a higher incentive to optimize Javascript as it was pretty slow to begin with and was exposed to a lot more users (in the sense that it runs on clients rather than servers) than Python, Ruby and Perl Edit: First hit on Google shows that jited Python (PyPy) is very close to jited Javascript: http://blog.kgriffs.com/2012/10/23/python-vs-node-vs-pypy.html http://blog.kgriffs.com/2012/10/23/python-vs-node-vs-pypy.ht...
    - tracker1 13y ago
      I think that PyPy is pretty impressive.. I also thought that IronPython's performance was impressive. If you look at the link to the followup post, it does show that in certain use cases NodeJS does a lot better... though without any code to review/reproduce it's hard to say. I happen to like JS.. Python's probably next on my list of languages to learn, but right now, I'm so deep in getting more proficient with NodeJS + Grunt + RequireJS, it isn't funny... our next-gen stack is much more NodeJS and MongoDB as a few tests, and backend processes have shown them to work very well together... We have a newer site on ASP.Net MVC 4 (started as 3, with EF), and an aging site built on layers of .Net cruft since 2006 that's nearly unmaintainable) ... So I'm trying to structure things moving forward so that they will be well maintainable for the future as much as possible. Which means some new, and some bleeding edge stuff. It also means some things I just don't care as much for... I actually like how the OneJS/Browserify takes CommonJS/NodeJS patterns more than AMD (RequireJS), but AMD seems better for the client side... I also don't care for Jade so much, but it was a group decision, and going that direction to share templates for email/client/server usage. Still working out sharing Backbone models, etc... it's all work. Sorry for blathering on. If I were doing desktop development, I'd be far more inclined towards Python today. As it stands, imho JS is a better fit for web development.

Teckla 13y ago

Dark Ages would imply that progress was set back significantly by some catastrophic event (ie: the fall of Netscape). Some of us would argue that JavaScript itself was that catastrophic event. No, really -- I'm not trolling. It's no longer reasonable for people to deny that JavaScript doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance. These Herculean efforts are impressive, but perhaps it's time to fix the language, even if that breaks backwards compatibility.

DigitalJack 13y ago
I've pretty much ignored javascript until this week. What exactly is wrong with it? Perhaps that is too broad. Can you give an example of something in javascript that impedes runtime performance optimization?
aroman 13y ago
They're working on it; it's called ES6. But in terms of your claim that "It's no longer reasonable for people to deny that JavaScript doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance", I'm not sure what to say to that. JavaScript code is some of the fastest interpreted code around, and projects like asm.js take that even farther. It's a phenomenally beautiful and expressive language once you get around the fact that it has some minor warts. I might have agreed with you 10 years ago, but I don't think there claim that JS simply doesn't lend itself to being performant is true at all -- all the evidence I see, both as a web JavaScript and Node.js developer, and following the recent relative news, has pointed me to quite the opposite: javascript is doing great right now.
- munificent 13y ago
  > JavaScript code is some of the fastest interpreted code around, and projects like asm.js take that even farther. That says something about market forces, but nothing about the language. JavaScript is the fastest dynamic language because it was the language that was most profitable to optimize. We don't have any real-world comparisons to other languages where an equal amount of brainpower was spent on optimization so that we could see how the language itself affects things.
  - derefr 13y ago
    > We don't have any real-world comparisons to other languages where an equal amount of brainpower was spent on optimization so that we could see how the language itself affects things. Yes we do: Lua--optimized by lots of big brains for use in gaming. And it turns out that LuaJIT is much faster than any current Javascript JIT--with the reason frequently given that it is a much simpler language.
    - lucian1900 13y ago
      Also PyPy, which is generally about as fast as v8 on benchmarks.
      - ksec 13y ago
        Not really.. https://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/performance-of-rust-and-dart-in-sudoku-solving/ https://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/performance...
    - simonster 13y ago
      By "lots of big brains," I think you mean Mike Pall :). But yeah, LuaJIT is really fast. Julia (http://julialang.org/ http://julialang.org/) is another dynamic language designed from the start for high performance, although the objectives are slightly different from those of Lua. While LuaJIT is fast at everything, Julia is really optimized so that running the same code many times is fast. Running a function the first time can be much slower than in other dynamic languages, I think because there is no baseline JIT or interpreter.
VeejayRampay 13y ago
I'm not too keen on the fact that for ALL programming tasks in ANY system you can pick amongst dozens of languages, but the web is still limited to just one. That is not modern at all. People need and demand choice, that web programming is still a monopoly to this day is bad, even though people do achieve tremendous things with Javascript every day.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
coldtea 13y ago
>It's no longer reasonable for people to deny that JavaScript doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance. For a language that "doesn't lend itself well to optimizing run-time performance", it did far better than: Python, Ruby, Perl and most other dynamic languages...
- codesuela 13y ago
  I think that is not a really fair comparison, Python with PyPy is pretty fast. Actually I would like to see a comparison for Python on PyPy vs JS in IonMonkey/V8. There was just a higher incentive to optimize Javascript as it was pretty slow to begin with and was exposed to a lot more users (in the sense that it runs on clients rather than servers) than Python, Ruby and Perl Edit: First hit on Google shows that jited Python (PyPy) is very close to jited Javascript: http://blog.kgriffs.com/2012/10/23/python-vs-node-vs-pypy.html http://blog.kgriffs.com/2012/10/23/python-vs-node-vs-pypy.ht...
  - tracker1 13y ago
    I think that PyPy is pretty impressive.. I also thought that IronPython's performance was impressive. If you look at the link to the followup post, it does show that in certain use cases NodeJS does a lot better... though without any code to review/reproduce it's hard to say. I happen to like JS.. Python's probably next on my list of languages to learn, but right now, I'm so deep in getting more proficient with NodeJS + Grunt + RequireJS, it isn't funny... our next-gen stack is much more NodeJS and MongoDB as a few tests, and backend processes have shown them to work very well together... We have a newer site on ASP.Net MVC 4 (started as 3, with EF), and an aging site built on layers of .Net cruft since 2006 that's nearly unmaintainable) ... So I'm trying to structure things moving forward so that they will be well maintainable for the future as much as possible. Which means some new, and some bleeding edge stuff. It also means some things I just don't care as much for... I actually like how the OneJS/Browserify takes CommonJS/NodeJS patterns more than AMD (RequireJS), but AMD seems better for the client side... I also don't care for Jade so much, but it was a group decision, and going that direction to share templates for email/client/server usage. Still working out sharing Backbone models, etc... it's all work. Sorry for blathering on. If I were doing desktop development, I'd be far more inclined towards Python today. As it stands, imho JS is a better fit for web development.