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Comment by warfangle | Hacker News Reader

"even 'fast' JS VMs are still rather slow"

Compared to C, Java, OCaml, and so forth, perhaps.

Compared to Ruby, Python, and PHP - not so much. (take a look at the v8 entry. and this is from '09 - v8 has seen some performance improvements since then)

http://blog.gmarceau.qc.ca/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependabil...

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None of those comparisons really matter in this discussion, except Java, which is clearly out of the competition anyway. Why? Because unless you're suddenly running Ruby, Python, PHP, C or OCaml as a client-side script embedded in your browser, you're comparing apples to oranges.

It would be interesting, though, if someone could point me (and everyone else) to a reasonable, credible comparison of HTML5+JS vs. Flash vs. Silverlight.

I've been playing with Silverlight and am very well impressed.

It is much faster than Flash (my tests where the RSA encryption algorithm), has a way more comprehensive library (specially for data manipulation) and "looks" way more secure than Flash (please take this last one with a grain of salt).

Its acceptance is still lagging (I estimate something like 50%-60%), but growing fast. MS promised the new Windows 7 phone with Silverlight on it for September. It might increase acceptance.

From what I see HTML 5 adds a lot of interesting new gadgets and features (like websockets and video streaming). It is a great innovation, but is not for complex Rich Internet Applications.

I'd expect, for the next 5 years, Silverlight to become the platform of choice for RIA (mostly CRUD applications), HTML5 for video streaming and some simpler games and Flash critically sandwiched between both.

Are you insane? I've had to develop a CRUD application in Silverlight, and it was dauntingly slow in comparison to Ruby and Python frameworks, and the tooling is still behind the rest of the C# frameworks.

I made a blog post a few weeks ago on the matter: http://www.andresosinski.com.ar/blog_view_entry/?id=6

Well, 3 points:

1) in most of your post you argue against the performance of VS2010 and how slow it is to edit XAML, not the performance of your Silverlight code/application. I take that it was as good as mine. And I think that this is what is being discussed here.

2) I agree that VS2010 is indeed much slower than previous versions, although I didn't experience something as terrible as you. But I am running it in a 3GHz quad-core with 4Gb of RAM, so...

3) Silverlight is a WEB client solution and that's the scope of this discussion and the post I answered. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think frameworks like Django and Rails are server-side technologies and, as such, don't compare to Flash and HTML5, and are out of scope for this discussion, right?

Partially so. However much Silverlight might fill a niche for rich media, the fact is that 99% of the use cases will be for internal business applications, where it fails spectacularly. And in the case of ubiquitous media apps, it's simple: Siverlight is not nor will it ever be ubiquitous.

IMO the fact that Silverlight hasn't been canned is just another point that shows that MS doesn't get it. When they saw where HTML5 was going they should have jumped on board with both feet. It's too late to force everyone to use their OS at this point so they should have been focused on being compatible with everyone but simply running better.

Silverlight will get a bit bigger but it's never going to matter in the long term, any more than Java applets ever will.

The cynic in me thinks that MS thought that rather than spending energy to "get it" and maybe failing, they could back all horses and see who would win. They usual strategy (and Google's current m.o. sadly).

Why is java clearly out of the competition anyway?

I think this is a remnant from a time long gone, where applets were much worse than they are now. They have worse user experience than flash, but the difference isn't really that big anymore (e.g. http://www.pulpgames.net/milpa/).

this doesn't include Silverlight in the comparisons, but it compares HTML5+JS vs. Flash on Mac and Windows platforms (and a few browsers):

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_html5_really_beat_...

You forgot to compare to Actionscript which is the language that matters in this comparison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actionscript

Adobe's had a JIT Actionscript compiler for years and it's really quite fast.

AS3 is fast as the language, but developers can make too CPU intensive animations there too. Moreover AS2 in which a lot of ads are still made is awful slow. And you can't control which ads (and the quality of the implementation) will be served when you're on some site -- therefore on weaker processors most of the sites which present the flash ads are amazingly hard to use -- you just experience lockups all the time.

> it's really quite fast.

Take a look at Silverlight. Its performance will surprise you, I am sure.

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