The Triumph of JavaScript

JavaScript is gobbling up the world at a dramatic rate with new tools and features. Should we accept this irreversible trend?

Do you remember those old memories? Many users disable JavaScript in the browser because they are concerned about security issues. Now such worries have become quite ridiculous--javascript has been the absolute king of domination of the internet world.

In a computing era marked by platform diversity, we need applications that can run on any device browser. Native applications may run faster and are not JavaScript-enabled for specific platforms, but the advent of the cloud era has significantly narrowed the gap between the two. There are now two roads in front of developers: develop applications that run in a single environment for desktop or mobile platforms, or write JavaScript applications that can be used by any user.

Of course, the specific answers to the above questions depend on the specific characteristics of the application. JavaScript has obvious limitations-for example, JavaScript cannot read or write to files in the client for security reasons. and "real" programmers are more inclined to use their own technology in the application of a large number of rapid development methods. But the advent of jquery and a range of other frameworks has made JavaScript capable of developing highly complex applications, while JSON (that is, JavaScript Object notation) enables all data transfer requirements except XML. Not to mention the powerful server-side transaction capabilities that node. js brings to JavaScript.

How far can JavaScript go?

Coincidentally, two of the latest blog posts on the new Technology Forum at InfoWorld are discussing the future potential of javascript: an article written by VisiCalc co-founder and technical veteran Dan Bricklin, and another by Adobe's Divya Manian and Thibault Imbert wrote.

In an article titled "JavaScript Beats native code on mobile platforms," Bricklin questions the assumption that JavaScript is running slower than native code:

Although, in general, native code performs much better than JavaScript in terms of mathematical calculations, this view ignores the independent running state of many applications. In many operations, the performance of JavaScript applications can often be endorsed or even better than native code.

Why is that? According to Bricklin, this is because a number of outstanding programmers have spent years tuning the browser to achieve extreme optimization of the running process. In addition, there has been a gradual progression of advanced operating mechanisms in the browser, such as 3D rendering.

As an agent for Adobe, Manian and Imbert analyzed the future of JavaScript and referred to Mozilla's research project Asm.js. The project "defines a set of javascript subsets that are generated by the compiler and are highly optimized with JavaScript virtual machines." "Even more exciting, they also explored rivertrail, a parallel programming model developed by Intel, and api--is certainly built for JavaScript," he added. The authors also mentioned that Adobe recommends introducing new standardized mechanisms for HTML 5 features, including regions, Blend modes, and shapes.

Through the signs of either clear or dark, we can almost conclude that Manian and Imbert have added a piece of Earth to the graves of Flash and ActionScript through their own blog posts.

JavaScript Eco-System

The Victory Manifesto of JavaScript is not a figment of the imagination-new JavaScript frameworks and other coding-related tools appear almost every week. In addition to jquery and node. js, seven JavaScript winners appeared in the best Open Source Software award for the InfoWorld website this year, namely:

AngularJS, a set of Toolsets for translating static HTML pages into JavaScript applications, while providing support for the MVC architecture.

Backbone.js, a set of JavaScript libraries that help developers add structures as models to applications and presentation data.

Bootstrap, a responsive web design framework designed to be combined with jquery.

Enyo, an object-oriented JavaScript framework, can be used to create HTML 5/CSS applications.

D3, a set of JavaScript libraries, enables vector graphics processing within the browser without the need for plugins.

Ember.js, a highly developed JavaScript framework for developing rich-feature MVC applications.

Emscripten, a compiler that translates C + + code into asm.js form, belongs to a highly optimized subset of JavaScript introduced by Mozilla.

The squad is extremely powerful – and this is just the tip of JavaScript's power. These tools are still in rapid development and most of them are open source projects, and their presence will continue to drive future improvements in JavaScript.

But...... Can JavaScript be done??

However, experienced developers are still somewhat disgusted with JavaScript. Andy Oliver of the InfoWorld website explains his attitude:

It's not impossible to make JavaScript universal--we just have to decide for ourselves if that's a good idea ... My immediate supervisor liked the idea of organizing a large group of developers who could use jquery and node. JS--they'd be better off using a lightweight database like MongoDB. But the developers around me obviously have a lot to do with the working habits of JavaScript. Project managers also don't want to put their valuable databases in the hands of a bunch of JavaScript developers.

In other words, JavaScript is an easy-to-learn and clumsy-footed programming mechanism--which can lead developers who write code into confusion and even confuse what they're doing.

But the team of outstanding JavaScript programmers is expanding, and many of them are able to implement many advanced functions with the help of asm.js or Intel Rivertrail Parallel programming mode. It is worth mentioning that they will never be bothered by the lack of tools to this kind of problem.

Of course, there are javascript alternatives in the market, the most representative of which is Google dart--, which is said to be launching the 1.0 official version in the near future. However, dart code needs to be compiled to be translated into JavaScript, which runs in most browser environments. The only exception is Google's launch of the chromium, which provides the dart virtual machine, and thus is able to directly interface with the new language.

The best doesn't always win. Similar to the x86 instruction set, sometimes winners are always able to stick to the final plan. I don't know how JavaScript expands to cater to the needs of developers to create applications (such as a rich app like Microsoft Office), but oddly enough, full-platform operation through a browser window seems to be an inevitable trend in the future. I personally do not want to be deliberately confrontational with this trend.

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The Triumph of JavaScript