
Am I the first?
"compared with the 2008 incarnation of Microsoft Internet Explorer, it's one hundred times faster." "Something that took a minute to execute two years ago takes a second to execute today,"
So that would be sixty times faster...
Google has uncloaked a new incarnation of the V8 JavaScript engine that underpins its Chrome browser. Dubbed "Crankshaft," the updated engine is roughly 50 per cent faster on Google's own V8 benchmark suite, according to the company's internal tests. Google vice president of product management Sundar Pinchai revealed the …
I marvel that they present this as "new" technology. Adaptive compilers have been around for a while now --- Java, .NET and probably others have them. The only "new" thing here is the technology is being applied to the bastard child language of the web, known as JavaScript.
The thing that took sixty seconds to run two years ago and now completes in one second --- it took only a second for the past decade in Java or .NET. And it's always run in a second in C.
Microsoft has the right idea with Silverlight --- client-side stuff is better programmed in a real language.
>It would sound like javascript is about to be on par with native code.
I don't think so. Java and .NET are no where near as quick as a properly written native C/C++ app, and I can't see that there's anything special about Javascript that makes its JIT compiler any better. My own benchmarking on some relatively modest maths loops has .NET being 80 times slower than a properly written C equivalent. Just because someone's Javascript app is udpating in the blink of an eye doesn't mean to say that it's as quick as a native app. Eye blinks are really quite slow.
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client-side stuff is better programmed in a real language.
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So I suggest we do away with browsers entirely and have a compiled application for every website - great idea.
... hang on - isn't that just an app store?
btw - .NET isn't a language - it's a framework compatible with many languages... in some ways it's a bit like ye olde Common Gateway Interface. Viewed from a certain angle you could say it's a bastard lovechild spawned by Microsoft when they discovered the WWW (OK, that was the god-awfulness of ASP first).
- please, can we ban Microsoft advocates from posting on articles relating to the web? They obviously don't understand it.
Micro who? Oh, those people with the dwindling customer base. You have fun writing code for that proprietary plugin with the illusion that you're presenting information for mass consumption.
I didn't realize there were still people in this world who misdefine the word computer to mean windows-compatible-device. The point of the web is to reach EVERYBODY. You should stick to writing your .NET apps; they will reach the same user base with better performance.
I thought Flash was wasted developer time, but Silverlight blows it completely out of the water in that regard.
"Microsoft has the right idea with Silverlight --- client-side stuff is better programmed in a real language."
I guess I mean "... had the right idea with Silverlight..." as MS has killed Silverlight as a browser technology. It is just for phones and STBs now. And I guess they weren't right about that at all, as MS is saying that HTML5 (and Javascript) is the best for the browser.
It kind of sucks to be a dev who wrote a bunch of Sliverlight stuff, only to have MS announce it is EOL.
Whilst everyone else is giving negative comments, I'd like to say that I think this shows why monopolies are a bad thing. Competition is giving us faster, better browsers, and giving us users choice.
Fanbois may say "but X copies Y", but that's what happens in a healthy competitive market. X does copy Y, and then adds a little bit to it too.
Also, we're getting all of this for free !
Long may it last !
Is this another attempt to move the world over to decimal time? It's been tried a few times in the past but never managed to get enough momentum. Now there is Google behind it perhaps it will happen.
"it's one hundred times faster. "Something that took a minute to execute two years ago takes a second to execute today," Pinchai said."
(or is it an otherwise boring slip of the tongue)
[slightly-OT-rant]
Nothing can help the Orange website. It frequently doesn't work -- enter details, submit, wait... wait... wait... and *then* it says it's not working and to try later --and even when it does work it's slow. And it's been exactly like this since... I dunno... 2005 or earlier maybe? I think the only reason Orange exist is because of good branding/advertising. Also their mobile network is acceptably reliable. Everything else Orange is kind of sucky though.
[/slightly-OT-rant]
Google still seems to be fighting the last war while Microsoft skipped that one and are aiming to make hardware rendering of interactive content the next flashpoint. I'll wager that however much the Chrome beta reduces Javascript execution time, it's still behind the IE9 beta on canvas content. And I'm saying this reluctantly as a Mac user to whom the IE9 engine isn't going to be available.
Today I'm going to add up the total number of seconds I lose to waiting for Javascript to execute.
Isn't hotspot compilation what Tracemonkey does as well?
And while I'm here, what's with the author's constant use of "quoted phrases" to describe what's going on? Isn't that how "teenagers" write their "geography reports" when they don't want to "take responsibility" for what they're writing?