I think the reluctance comes from being burned by Microsoft infusing their own technologies into the web browser in the past.
I realize that Python and Ruby would be standard and open but people still fear the possible fragmentation.
I realize that Python and Ruby would be standard and open but people still fear the possible fragmentation.
What if we do have a general purpose vm. Doesn't each browser still need to implement language compilers for all languages to that vm?
ie what if Microsoft supports langauge foo but not language baz. Chrome supports language baz but not foo and Mozilla only supports their own proprietary language. All of which compile to the common vm.
How do websites written for IE work on Chrome, and visa versa? Do all sites have to have their code byte compiled before shipping?
Then your stuck with performance differences and byte code incompatibilities at best, which is about where we are now.
Someody else already mentioned that compiling python or ruby to JavaScript could be an option. We already have clojurescript which does this.
I'm personally pro-web standards, but I'm very much anti-Javascript is the only way forever.
Client-side languages have always been a choice that a developer has to make. Should I write my Windows program in .NET, or should I make my users install Python and write in that? Should it be compatible with Python 2.4, or is Python 3 good? Maybe I should just write it for Mac OS X, and that'll have Python 2.6 for sure...
It's for the developer to decide which audience he/she wants to accept/alienate. We've never thrown up our hands and gone "Oh gosh! All this platform stuff such a pain! Let's go back to C and UNIX and forget all this nonsense."
Yet this is the exact same argument being made for not moving towards a VM solution on browsers, and I truly don't understand it.