On 12/18/2012 10:29 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
On Tuesday, 18 December 2012 at 18:11:37 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
Javascript proves that bytecode is not required for "write once, run
everywhere", which was one of the pitches for bytecode.
What is required for w.o.r.e. is a specification for the source code that
precludes undefined and implementation defined behavior.
Yes, bytecode isn't strictly required, but it's certainly desirable. Bytecode is
much easier to interpret, much easier to compile to, and more compact.
Bytecode would have added nothing to js but complexity.
I think you're seriously overestimating the cost of compilation.
The downside of bytecode is loss of high-level meaning... but that depends on
the bytecode. There's nothing stopping the bytecode from being a serialised AST
(actually, that would be ideal).
As I pointed out to Andrei, Java bytecode *is* a serialized AST.
