> If we're going to throw away performance, it has to be for a good reason
I agree.
We are losing performance in return for: portability, security and standardization. The web runs everywhere, has a good outlook for continuing to do so (no fat binaries of current archs), and anyone can build a new web browser based on standards.
None of the other options proposed give us portability, secutiy and standardization right now. Perhaps with more work they might, and perhaps JS VMs will get closer to their speed as well. It's good to try to from both sides to improve things, and people are doing so.
I don't think anyone is overlooking some obvious better solution - that fits the requirements - that is before us. PNaCl (NaCl is not portable, so not relevant here) is interesting, just like the JVM and CLR, but they have major hurdles to pass if they want to be standardized, and that effort has not even begun in the case of PNaCl.
I agree.
We are losing performance in return for: portability, security and standardization. The web runs everywhere, has a good outlook for continuing to do so (no fat binaries of current archs), and anyone can build a new web browser based on standards.
None of the other options proposed give us portability, secutiy and standardization right now. Perhaps with more work they might, and perhaps JS VMs will get closer to their speed as well. It's good to try to from both sides to improve things, and people are doing so.
I don't think anyone is overlooking some obvious better solution - that fits the requirements - that is before us. PNaCl (NaCl is not portable, so not relevant here) is interesting, just like the JVM and CLR, but they have major hurdles to pass if they want to be standardized, and that effort has not even begun in the case of PNaCl.