perhaps it's best to have a representation between Javascript and machine code that other languages can target
And the payoff for that extra complexity and a probable loss of performance is... what, exactly?
Particularly when you consider that even if Chrome did have a VM that could run compiled Flash, Python, Ruby, and Lisp... very few programmers would ever use those languages, because the resulting code wouldn't work in any other browser?
Unless you require a plugin, Javascript is the greatest common factor in modern browsers. That's not going to change in the foreseeable future, both because it's a very tedious long-term project to establish and promote a cross-browser alternative, and because the payoff is probably not big enough to justify that effort: As guys like Yegge and Crockford have pointed out, Javascript is a pretty good language to have gotten stuck with, once you learn to steer around the kludged bits.
I thought I mentioned the payoff, as did the author: using an arbitrary language in the browser.
I don't think this is necessarily the way to go, but I think it's an interesting idea. I pointed it out because this blog post is the first place I've seen it.
And the payoff for that extra complexity and a probable loss of performance is... what, exactly?
Particularly when you consider that even if Chrome did have a VM that could run compiled Flash, Python, Ruby, and Lisp... very few programmers would ever use those languages, because the resulting code wouldn't work in any other browser?
Unless you require a plugin, Javascript is the greatest common factor in modern browsers. That's not going to change in the foreseeable future, both because it's a very tedious long-term project to establish and promote a cross-browser alternative, and because the payoff is probably not big enough to justify that effort: As guys like Yegge and Crockford have pointed out, Javascript is a pretty good language to have gotten stuck with, once you learn to steer around the kludged bits.