5 karma · joined March 21, 2013
But! IN THEORY You could still construct a processor out of electromagnetic relays (springs, contacts, leads and solenoids only), if perhaps your goal was to never exceed 100 Hz.
(...at first I was going to point out http://www.bigmessowires.com but it turns out that beyond the wire wrap connections, he's still using modern semi-conductor packages)
A language interpreted at runtime, by an application that runs inside an operating system (which may or may not be virtualized) that boots into protected mode. Let me get this straight, you're ostensibly describing this as being "bare metal"?
Have you ever heard the terms "kernel mode" or "ring zero"?
Oh wait, you qualified it as "the 'metal' of the web"... so it's an "analogy". Sorry to be pedantic, but when people say "bare metal" in the context of platform virtualiztion, "bare metal" literally means just that. The executable code is compiled into binary that directly correlates to the copper wires (and etched semi-conductors, or perhaps even vacuum tubes) of the specific, real, tangible machine intended to execute the code. JavaScript is nothing like this.
Maybe the packets and datagrams of transmission protocols are the "bare metal of the web", but JavaScript most certainly is not.
Check out the Communication Systems OSI Model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
I'd contend that nothing above Layer 4 could be considered analogous to "bare metal".