All of a sudden you don't need to build in Python support, or Ruby support or LISP support or whatever else you fancy into the browser. The browser no longer cares what you compiled the script from, it just gets the standard bytecode and everyone's happy.
Yes please. Just define a straightforward VM in the browser and be done with it. Let the coders handle the rest, and compile any of their favorite languages to it (they will!). Java was on the right track, too bad the implementation (and APIs) were so clunky instead of nicely integrated, otherwise we'd never have needed the JS, Flash, Silverlight, Java applets, HTML5 mess that we're in now.
Anyway, hindsight is 20/20, now we can just settle on JS as a target VM. Too bad it's implemented slightly different in every browser, making it inconvenient as intermediate format. Also, going through a dynamic language is an inefficient level of indirection if you want to program in a static language. You throw away information that could have been used to optimize.
Yes please. Just define a straightforward VM in the browser and be done with it. Let the coders handle the rest, and compile any of their favorite languages to it (they will!). Java was on the right track, too bad the implementation (and APIs) were so clunky instead of nicely integrated, otherwise we'd never have needed the JS, Flash, Silverlight, Java applets, HTML5 mess that we're in now.
Anyway, hindsight is 20/20, now we can just settle on JS as a target VM. Too bad it's implemented slightly different in every browser, making it inconvenient as intermediate format. Also, going through a dynamic language is an inefficient level of indirection if you want to program in a static language. You throw away information that could have been used to optimize.