I would expect to hear something like that not from a respected tehnologist but rather from yet another "cool kid". He could just say "JavaScript is awesome" on a single slide and that wouldn't tell much less than what the whole presentation did.
> First they said JS couldn't be useful for building rich internet apps
Who said it is? Rich - yes. Anything near to match complexity of the desktop apps - never(think Photoshop).
> Then they said it couldn't be fast
Benchmarks, maybe?
> Then it couldn't do multicore/GPU
Webworkers are nice, but you can add bindings to all of this stuff for virtually any programming language.
> JavaScript's parser does a more efficient job... than the JVM's bytecode verifier.
Figures again?
> No view source
How viewing at minified JS is going to help me? Especially in the light of what he had on his previous slide:
function f() {
L0:
g();
L1:
if (p)
goto L0;
o.m();
goto L1;
}
Good luck "view source" on what he calls "the assembly of the web".
Then the screenshots of 3D games that presumably use WebGL - that just doesn't cut it. Just about every game demo I tried out on my previous generation hi-end ATI graphics card had performance issues. And the level of graphics is comparable to what native games had 10 years ago. That's a joke.
> Typed arrays
Until they add records so that I can declare an array of any type efficiently don't even bring this up. This is an ad-hoc solution.
I can't make a printing press in C++, but why would I want to?
Photoshop was made during an era where computers were used to make media for physical printing. You would take a picture with an analog camera, digitize it, manipulate it in Photoshop, and then have it ready for print. "Save For Web" is the closest you get to using Photoshop for publishing to the web, and you'd have to admit it's a bit of an afterthought in the whole experience.
Software doesn't exist on it's own. It exists in an input and output environment, beyond just mice and monitors. It exists to capture information, manipulate it, and then republish it.
In many ways, memegenerator.net does a better job of consuming, manipulating, and publishing content for the web than Photoshop does.
Photoshop will probably not go away. There are still printing presses and there are avenues to publish things made with them. Media tends to gain a lot of inertia by the time it gets to the point of being a household name. However, this inertia doesn't really impede some other form of media from gaining it's own momentum. Photoshop is busy being Photoshop, not memegenerator.net.
If you ask my opinion, I'd say there is plenty of ground somewhere between memegenerator.net and Photoshop and there is no better language and environment to create these tools than the environment where they will be published: JavaScript running in a web browser.
> Photoshop was made during an era where computers were used to make media for physical printing. You would take a picture with an analog camera, digitize it, manipulate it in Photoshop, and then have it ready for print. "Save For Web" is the closest you get to using Photoshop for publishing to the web, and you'd have to admit it's a bit of an afterthought in the whole experience.
Javascript was made during an era where rich web applications didn't exist and there only was a need for client side verification for form input. Why do you refuse Photoshop in evolution but allow it for JS?
I sense trollery here: "but you can add bindings to all of this stuff for virtually any programming language." Who said otherwise? The bogus claims against JS (going back to the "RIA" era, where IBM and Macromedia/Adobe made such arguments) already fell.
The issue is not what languages can program the GPU somehow -- because only JS is supported directly in browsers, the issue is whether JS cannot. Clearly (WebGL, River Trail, even GLSL embedded in an unknown-type script and downloaded via JS) that's false. But it seemed true once, which led to the false anti-JS prophecy.
At the risk of feeding a troll, I suggest you use the down arrow on the "goto L0" slide to see how JS enables compiling control effects without goto.
Yes, typed arrays were ad-hoc (so are many incremental web standards that win). Binary data (arrays and structs, which compose) as proposed in ES6 are not.
Just skimmed through the presentation, yes I had to be there because the slides don't tell too much. On the other hand there is no point in going to the conference where the speaker uses the work "fuck" on every other slide and concludes it with "YOU ARE ALL AWESOME". I'd prefer to attend more technical talks, without any "awesomeness". And I can't see how she made Photoshop irrelevant. I'd expect a more credible study on it.
> Photoshop is a notorious pig. I know many designers who have already ditched it for in-browser development.
The point was not about using Photoshop for design on the web, but rather its complexity. IDE's, CAD, engineering applications. Well, we don't even have to go that far. When Google Docs are going to process 500k row spreadsheets? I use Google Docs casually for quick and simple stuff, but for any serious work - probably not.
> I know many designers who have already ditched it for in-browser development
I know many people(all of them are extremely bright) who use Linux on the desktop. I use Linux too(I am not implying I am a clever bloke here). Does this mean Linux is winning the OS war? Otherwise this is just argumentum ad populum. I'll look through the slides and get back to you.
> I sense trollery here: "but you can add bindings to all of this stuff for virtually any programming language." Who said otherwise? The bogus claims against JS (going back to the "RIA" era, where IBM and Macromedia/Adobe made such arguments) already fell.
I apologize if you suspected a troll in me, but I did not imply comparison with Flash. Flash is just another competitor for you. What What I meant by "but you can add bindings to all of this stuff for virtually any programming language." is if use C/C++ or any other language with access to the OS APIs I don't depend on the wits of browser vendors shipping a particular API for me.
Believe me or not, but this is exactly the game I was referring to. The link was on the HN last week or so. To be more specific, my graphics card is AMD Radeon HD 6970, capable of running Crysis 2, and I was experiencing lags. As for the graphics, have you ever played Half-Life 2? It was released in 2004 and I can't see this game having any better graphics if not worse. Not to mention that Half-Life would have at least 3x higher FPS on my hardware. Could you please clarify on "You simply do not know what you are talking about"?
> Yes, typed arrays were ad-hoc (so are many incremental web standards that win). Binary data (arrays and structs, which compose) as proposed in ES6 are not.
Ok, it's good to see JS is going in the right direction. And thanks for taking time to responding to my message. I am actually excited about the work you do at Mozilla on Rust, and I'd like to see a language like that to be available on the client side. But I understand that it's not going to happen anytime soon.
> First they said JS couldn't be useful for building rich internet apps
Who said it is? Rich - yes. Anything near to match complexity of the desktop apps - never(think Photoshop).
> Then they said it couldn't be fast
Benchmarks, maybe?
> Then it couldn't do multicore/GPU
Webworkers are nice, but you can add bindings to all of this stuff for virtually any programming language.
> JavaScript's parser does a more efficient job... than the JVM's bytecode verifier.
Figures again?
> No view source
How viewing at minified JS is going to help me? Especially in the light of what he had on his previous slide:
function f() { L0: g(); L1: if (p) goto L0; o.m(); goto L1; }
Good luck "view source" on what he calls "the assembly of the web".
Then the screenshots of 3D games that presumably use WebGL - that just doesn't cut it. Just about every game demo I tried out on my previous generation hi-end ATI graphics card had performance issues. And the level of graphics is comparable to what native games had 10 years ago. That's a joke.
> Typed arrays
Until they add records so that I can declare an array of any type efficiently don't even bring this up. This is an ad-hoc solution.