> The amount of brainpower that has gone into making JavaScript fast is amazing.
It really is, and it really makes me sad that the manpower wasn't instead invested in a better underlying language.
If only Eich had been allowed to implement a Scheme for Netscape Navigator! I really dislike Scheme (it's under-specified, and has some poor design decisions like a single namespace), but having a homoiconic language available within every browser in the world would have been amazing. The manager who squashed that is single-handedly responsible for setting back the development of computing by at least twenty years (and more likely thirty, since I predict that it'll be at least another decade before we're able to escape the JavaScript rut).
It really is, and it really makes me sad that the manpower wasn't instead invested in a better underlying language.
If only Eich had been allowed to implement a Scheme for Netscape Navigator! I really dislike Scheme (it's under-specified, and has some poor design decisions like a single namespace), but having a homoiconic language available within every browser in the world would have been amazing. The manager who squashed that is single-handedly responsible for setting back the development of computing by at least twenty years (and more likely thirty, since I predict that it'll be at least another decade before we're able to escape the JavaScript rut).