Took me over a year to finish writing this monster of an article. 4,000+ words, 200+ links, and lots of research covering countless JavaScript runtimes and engines.
Please have a read! I guarantee you'll learn something new.
Please have a read! I guarantee you'll learn something new.
One of the regrettable quirks of our industry is the way we replicate theoretically language-neutral components separately in multiple language ecosystems and verticals. I wish we didn't a separate npm and cargo. I wish the polyglot runtimes you mention (especially Graal) would see more adoption. I wish we didn't have both Duktape and MicroPython. There's nothing language-specific about efficient garbage collection or compact bytecode or package dependency resolution.
I totally agree on reinventing the wheel. I think our biggest tool towards that will be Node-API, which is the one low-level building block that JavaScript runtimes seem to agree on (and heck, I'm sure non-JavaScript engines could implement a decent chunk of Node-API). The Hermes team are currently interested in it (https://github.com/facebook/hermes/pull/1377#issuecomment-29...) for implementing heavy chunks of the ECMAScript spec like Intl and Temporal as plug-in features.
It's interesting that you bring up tooling like npm and Cargo, I've never thought of sharing those. Although I'm no great shakes at Rust, I really, really liked how Cargo did things (e.g. optional dependencies and rigid library structure) and it'd be incredible to have that for the JavaScript ecosystem.
Also do keep hearing nothing but great things about Graal, I think it's being slept on.
FYI: https://thenewstack.io/vites-creator-on-a-unified-javascript...
They'll have a tough job getting sticky ecosystems like React Native to adopt, but hope to see them make a compelling case for their stack.
If the insight in the article is actually unique, it'll just get regurgitated by other writers and AIs a hundred times, maybe even with better visuals and diagrams and that'll be the article that gets all the clicks.
And while I figured Hacker News would be a coin flip, for other sites that show link previews, I was optimistic that the cartoons would encourage a click, too. In a time where many writers are using soulless AI-generated poster images, just putting in a token effort to do something original goes a long way.
As for the article getting regurgitated, I am not too worried. It is simply an awfully long, awfully dense article for any LLM to synthesise more than a handful of bullet points out of, so I think any derivative product is going to make for a far less engrossing read. Indeed, if you try asking ChatGPT about runtimes right now, you'll get a pathetically shallow and mainstream analysis.
There may well be clickbait articles spawned from this, but I'm optimistic that people will find the source and be able to tell in an instance that it's the Real McCoy.
Yes, AI will scrape it and regurgitate it - but over-time it will reach people who need to know - plus it is also helpful for oneself...
It just takes one person who read the article (or found it later via search) to get a huge ROI if it resonates just right.
A job opportunity, an invite to some event, a potential collaboration - the right reader can unlock all kinds of opportunities.
And what about things like Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, and Illustrator which can run Javascript using either Extendscript in older versions or V8 in modern versions.
https://developer.adobe.com/xd/uxp/uxp/versions/
https://developer.adobe.com/photoshop/uxp/2022/ps_reference/
I've not heard of any of these, wow – very cool that it's still bundled with Windows. I suspect that most things related to JScript wouldn't fit the scope of "the last decade", though? I tended to focus on creation date when deciding what should be in scope.
> And what about things like Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, and Illustrator which can run Javascript using either Extendscript in older versions or V8 in modern versions.
Hmm, these may well qualify, you're right. Maybe I can add them to the addendum. I'd want to do a bit of research to understand their timeline and genealogy before including them, though. Wrists beginning to hurt for today now, though!
I do recall now that Adobe PDFs can run JavaScript. That would've been worth a mention for sure.
I really appreciate such deep dives, though I admittedly knew some of them because I was also obsessed much like you with the edge/ js engine space but still I learned a lot
I really liked reading through the blog. Please, take your time, rest and create such beautiful masterpieces in the future too, I would be waiting for them patiently!
Have a nice day.
I thought this article was highly informative and useful. Great job, and thanks!
As for writing, I'd like to stick to more manageable topics in future so that I can write as a hobby rather than as daunting work. My previous "Frontend predictions for 2024" (https://buttondown.com/whatever_jamie/archive/frontend-predi...) was similarly thorough and took an exhausting rush to write up. But simpler articles like "Staying productive with chronic pain" (https://buttondown.com/whatever_jamie/archive/staying-produc...) were all possible to finish in a weekend.
There's probably a good story in Node-API, but I think I'd rather take on a research-light topic for a break first!
Cool things coming in the pipeline!
of course i can look it up, but you probably have a better insight than the slop i'll find off google.
thanks for the article. these days it's rare to see something so well researched and written while still being able to tell it was authored by a human. cheers
Android doesn't have a JIT restriction. API restrictions are expected to be enforced at runtime, not through review time checks.
Another regrettable thing about our industry is the proliferation of locked-gate-in-an-open-field-tier security theater. Apple's PROT_EXEC restriction has zero security benefit: anything JIT-compiled code can do, interpreted code can do too.
(In the same vein, macOS Santa (used by many a tech company to police programs runnable on Apple developer endpoints) doesn't restrict script launches at all. The interpreters that Apple ships with macOS have built-in FFIs like Python ctypes that enables programs launched using these interpreters to do anything a Mach-O binary can do.)
While I respect the sweat and cleverness that went into making JS runtimes work efficiently while wearing Apple's no-PROT_EXEC hairshirt, none of this work ought to have been necessary. Imagine how much further ahead the industry would be if these big brains had focused on solving some other problem.
> thanks for the article. these days it's rare to see something so well researched and written while still being able to tell it was authored by a human. cheers
Really appreciated, thanks! I do despaire that the ease of generating content with AI disincentivises (and discourages) authors from expending real effort, but there's a satisfying inflection point at which you can be sure you've written something that an LLM couldn't possibly have come up with.