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On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 10:51:49AM +0100, tom wrote: > You don't need to use either Java or .NET or any other 'VM' type approach. I don’t think I said you did. My point was just that .NET is Microsoft’s attempt to get in on Sun’s market. > Its technically quite easy to set up JavaScript/Browser to call the > libraries on your machine to do all the things you like to do - how else > do you think Flash and Silverlight work? > The only reason why we don't is > because companies have either together or singularly prevented the > standards orgs from agreeing on standards to do this, and by providing > their own 'solutions' helped redirect effort away from the optimal (for > the user and in most cases the developer) solutions. What do you mean we don’t do it? You’ve just said that this is how Flash and Silverlight work. These aren’t standards, but they’re widely used anyway (unfortunately). > In My ideal world we'd have had an Object Oriented JavaScript with JIT > for the browser and compiler for system side to link in client side > stuff in a standards compliant way - through mime types for video etc. > I'd also like the same JS engine for sever side on apache (for me) so I > could stick to one language for programming, and one operating system > (i.e. no VM's) for doing 'other' work. Not really feasible, as you want a limited environment for the client-side language (otherwise you end up with braindamage like ActiveX), and on the server-side you want it to be somewhat less limited (being able to access files, for example, would be useful). I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use the same language, just not necessarily the same engine. As I understand it, though, there’s no reason you can’t run javascript through spidermonkey on the server, with maybe some hacking around to hook it into apache. Personally, I wouldn’t use javascript more than I had to (I’m currently refactoring our web application to move as much processing as possible from javascript on the client to python on the server). Javascript isn’t a great language to begin with, and it’s hampered even more by the wide use of shoddy implementations (Microsoft again…). -- Benjamin M. A’Lee || mail: bma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx web: http://bma.subvert.org.uk/ || gpg: 0x166891C7 “The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.” — Emma Goldman -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html