4/01/2013

The end of the Javascript domination

The world is changed,
I feel it in the water,
I feel it in the earth.
I smell it in the air
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring


Mozilla's ASM.js release last week created serious buzz in the programming community. Some people are excited by it, some criticize it, but almost everybody agrees that it may have significant impact on the future of the web.
I consider it as one more nail in monolanguage web's coffin. Today there are more than 200 languages and tools related to Javascript generation and this number is increasing every week. Of course, most of them are no more than amateur projects that are designed to solve some kind of Javascript problem. However, there is a clear trend. The reason of this trend is obvious: complexity of web client-side is increasing and Javascript is not always ready to support this complexity. Most of these tools have emerged over the last few years. Here are few of them I consider to be most important:
Language/Tool     Year of appearance
CoffeeScript2009
Dart2011
TypeScript2012
Emscripten2012
ASM.js2013

What is really important is that three major browser vendors seems to be supporters of this movement: Google (with its Dart), Microsoft (TypeScript) and Mozilla (ASM.js). Together they hold 90% of browser market share and definitely have enough power and influence to change client-side programming landscape over the next few years.
I don't mean that Dart, TypeScript or some other language will replace Javascript completely. It will always be here, but it is hard to argue with the fact that Javascript is no longer the only client-side programming language in the web. It still dominates, but things are going to change over the next few years.
Any thoughts?

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