Re: Lightning fast javascript?
I'm not sure it's JavaScript (per se) that's the problem - it's had enough performance work done on it for the purpose it serves. It's the operations on the DOM that take the time - if you were looking at the most efficient way to update a user interface it wouldn't be by applying a stream of incremental changes using a text-based mark-up language that then interacts with a text-based styling system that likely causes a significant amount of re-rendering that's then partially invalidated by the next incremental change.
It would be the same problem with Wasm - which is as near to native code as you're going to get - you still have to call back into the DOM to display the results.
Historically, the focus has always been on getting load off the servers and shifting it to the browser. If you're happy to do the work on the server, then there's an argument for doing all of it and simply sending a stream of GPU operations to the browser to draw the result. I think that's the way we may be headed, even if we're proceeding by a series of apparently random walks.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
