So what once was a quaint, tiny scripting language for Java Applets, JavaScript has grown since it’s debut (as “LiveScript”) in 1995, in what can be accurately called a slow march to “take over the world,” or at least the world of client side web coding. Javascript and HTML has functionally fully won over a list of mostly proprietary dead or receding web technologies: ActiveX, ShockwaveDirector, Silverlight, client-side Java, PDF files, and Adobe Flash.
Another milestone is about to occur when Firefox ships it’s OdenMonkey project in what will likely by FireFox 22 this summer. This has promise of bringing JavaScript speed within a reasonable distance of native code. That would mean that JavaScript apps would run about 20 to 30 times faster than they do today.
As Techmeme put it:
“JavaScript performance is still a far cry from what you can expect from a native program written in something like C or C++. To bridge this gap, Mozilla launched the asm.js project a while back and today, this code has landed in Firefox Nightly. OdinMonkey, Firefox’s name for its asm.js optimization module, allows developers to write their code in C or C++, compile it to JavaScript using Emscripten and run it at a speed that is within 2x of native performance.
Unless the project hits any roadblocks, Mozilla expects OdinMonkey to ship with the stable version of Firefox 22 in June.”
via Firefox Nightly Now Includes OdinMonkey, Brings JavaScript Closer To Running At Native Speeds | TechCrunch.
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