A new moon (downunder) brings time for new D discussion topic :-)

Myself having a long time interest in "webapp" development and given that the web client platform is tied to having only JavaScript ubiquitously available (i.e. in the browser) and having tried a zillion OOP wrappers and frameworks for JavaScript that don't scale for significantly-sized apps,

my current thinking seems to be aligning with others that JavaScript should be seen as the new "binary", albeit in text form, that HLLs should be compiling down to for "webapp" development.

Accordingly I would like to promote a discussion on the suitability of D, perhaps even D1, as a HLL that could possibly compile down to JavaScript as a better candidate language compared to some of the other contenders.

To set some context for this discussion consider that GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is basically Java transmutated into JavaScript "object code" which is ultimately deployed on the client though development is facilitated via a Java IDE.

Also there is Haxe, http://haxe.org/ , which reminds me of D1, it being small and concise, and, well, rather than my words, let me copy what the intro page says:

haXe (pronounced as hex) is an open source programming language.

While most other languages are bound to their own platform (Java to the JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the Flash Player), haXe is a multiplatform language.

It means that you can use haXe to target the following platforms :

    * Javascript : You can compile a haXe program to a single .js file. You can access the typed browser DOM APIs with autocompletion support, and all the dependencies are resolved at compilation time.
    * Flash : You can compile a haXe program to a .swf file. haXe can compile for Flash Players 6 to 10, with either "old" Flash<8 API or newest AS3/Flash9+ API. haXe offers very good performance and language features to develop Flash content.
    * NekoVM : You can compile a haXe program to NekoVM bytecode. This can be used for server-side programming such as dynamic webpages (using mod_neko for Apache) and also for commandline or desktop applications, since the NekoVM can be embedded and extended with some other DLL.
    * PHP : You can compile a haXe program to .php files. This enable you to use a high level strictly-typed language such as haXe while keeping full compatibility with your existing server platform and libraries.
    * C++ : You can now generate C++ code from your haXe source code, with the required Makefiles. This is very useful for creating native applications, for instance in iPhone development.

The idea behind haXe is to let the developer choose the best platform to do a given job. In general, this is not easy to do because every new platform comes with its own programming language. What haXe provides to you is :

    * a standardized language with many good features
    * a standard library (including Date, Xml, Math...) that works the same on all platforms
    * platform-specific libraries : the full APIs for a given platform are accessible from haXe


So I guess the thrust of my topic tonight is, could D somehow reinvent itself to fame and fortune in the high-level-language-for-JavaScript space?

Cheers and beers as usual,

Justin Johansson

On 4/20/2010 8:50 AM, Justin Johansson wrote:
> A new moon (downunder) brings time for new D discussion topic :-)
>
> Myself having a long time interest in "webapp" development and given
> that the web client platform is tied to having only JavaScript
> ubiquitously available (i.e. in the browser) and having tried a zillion
> OOP wrappers and frameworks for JavaScript that don't scale for
> significantly-sized apps,
>
> my current thinking seems to be aligning with others that JavaScript
> should be seen as the new "binary", albeit in text form, that HLLs
> should be compiling down to for "webapp" development.
>
> Accordingly I would like to promote a discussion on the suitability of
> D, perhaps even D1, as a HLL that could possibly compile down to
> JavaScript as a better candidate language compared to some of the other
> contenders.
>
> To set some context for this discussion consider that GWT (Google Web
> Toolkit) is basically Java transmutated into JavaScript "object code"
> which is ultimately deployed on the client though development is
> facilitated via a Java IDE.
>
> Also there is Haxe, http://haxe.org/ , which reminds me of D1, it being
> small and concise, and, well, rather than my words, let me copy what the
> intro page says:
>
> haXe (pronounced as hex) is an open source programming language.
>
> While most other languages are bound to their own platform (Java to the
> JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the Flash Player), haXe is a
> multiplatform language.
>
> It means that you can use haXe to target the following platforms :
>
> * Javascript : You can compile a haXe program to a single .js file. You
> can access the typed browser DOM APIs with autocompletion support, and
> all the dependencies are resolved at compilation time.
> * Flash : You can compile a haXe program to a .swf file. haXe can
> compile for Flash Players 6 to 10, with either "old" Flash<8 API or
> newest AS3/Flash9+ API. haXe offers very good performance and language
> features to develop Flash content.
> * NekoVM : You can compile a haXe program to NekoVM bytecode. This can
> be used for server-side programming such as dynamic webpages (using
> mod_neko for Apache) and also for commandline or desktop applications,
> since the NekoVM can be embedded and extended with some other DLL.
> * PHP : You can compile a haXe program to .php files. This enable you to
> use a high level strictly-typed language such as haXe while keeping full
> compatibility with your existing server platform and libraries.
> * C++ : You can now generate C++ code from your haXe source code, with
> the required Makefiles. This is very useful for creating native
> applications, for instance in iPhone development.
>
> The idea behind haXe is to let the developer choose the best platform to
> do a given job. In general, this is not easy to do because every new
> platform comes with its own programming language. What haXe provides to
> you is :
>
> * a standardized language with many good features
> * a standard library (including Date, Xml, Math...) that works the same
> on all platforms
> * platform-specific libraries : the full APIs for a given platform are
> accessible from haXe
>
>
> So I guess the thrust of my topic tonight is, could D somehow reinvent
> itself to fame and fortune in the high-level-language-for-JavaScript space?
>
> Cheers and beers as usual,
>
> Justin Johansson

I've done a significant amount of web-app development myself, but to me this seems like a bad idea.  If I want to sit down and write something quickly and don't care about performance, JavaScript or Haxe are great languages to do it in and can be more productive than D.  However, even the best JavaScript vm's (like V8) are on average 10x slower than C++/D.  So if performance matters, I always chose D.

If I write D to run on a JavaScript VM, I lose both the productivity of JavaScript and the speed of D.

Eric Poggel wrote:
>>
>>
>> So I guess the thrust of my topic tonight is, could D somehow reinvent
>> itself to fame and fortune in the high-level-language-for-JavaScript space?
>>
>> Justin Johansson
> 
> I've done a significant amount of web-app development myself, but to me this seems like a bad idea.  If I want to sit down and write something quickly and don't care about performance, JavaScript or Haxe are great languages to do it in and can be more productive than D.  However, even the best JavaScript vm's (like V8) are on average 10x slower than C++/D.  So if performance matters, I always chose D.
> 
> If I write D to run on a JavaScript VM, I lose both the productivity of JavaScript and the speed of D.

Thanks for the reality check; probably it's a silly idea.  Nevertheless I'm glad to have inquired as, even though I like the idea of optional static typing in Haxe, I'll be reconsidering whether using Haxe in a new web project is a good idea also.  One thing I can't figure out is why Haxe is not as popular as it "should" be.  Maybe for similar reasons as you say?

Cheers
Justin

"Justin Johansson" <no@spam.com> wrote in message news:hqk7ve$2ouj$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> my current thinking seems to be aligning with others that JavaScript should be seen as the new "binary", albeit in text form, that HLLs should be compiling down to for "webapp" development.
>
>
> Also there is Haxe, http://haxe.org/ , which reminds me of D1, it being small and concise, and, well, rather than my words, let me copy what the intro page says:
>

I believe *very* strongly in using a REAL language that then gets compiled down to worthless crap like PHP, ActionScript, etc., whenever such worthless crap platforms are necessary. Which is, of course, necessary FAR too often when you do web development, as I do.

I use Haxe for any and all PHP and Flash development and I will *never* go back to direct PHP or ActionScript. Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER! PHP in particular is by far the absolute worst, most pathetic language *and* platform (PHP's idiocy extends far beyond the language itself) ever conceived and actually used in the real world (Ok, I'm not counting old mainframes). ActionScript2 and the Flash8 API are barely any better (and unfortunately, if you want *real* compatibility, AS3/Flash9 aren't really as much of an option as all the kiddie trend-whores that have infected the programming world like the pretend.) So yea, count me as one person who does go the Haxe route (including HaxeIgniter), swears by it (quite literally, as you can see ;) ), and will *never* look back.

D, or at least something closer to D, would be FAR better than Haxe, though. In fact even though I just raved about Haxe, I actually hate Haxe. Yes, it's vastly superior to using direct PHP/AS, so much so that IMO there's no good reason ever to use PHP/AS directly. But Haxe is still crap anyway. Just off the top of my head, and I know I'm forgetting a lot:

- The documentation is god-awful.

- The allegedly-strong type system has one hell of a blatant and idiotic hole that probably won't get fixed: http://code.google.com/p/haxe/issues/detail?id=105

- Haxe has no real metaprogramming, and it's "generics" make C#'s gimped generics ( http://blog.dev-scene.com/abscissa/2008/03/10/i-want-my-iarithmetic/ ) look practically super-powered. (Granted, at least you can add two generic types in Haxe unlike C#, but in other ways they really are very, very limited.)

- The syntax for defining properties is absolutely horrid, and will cause severe optical hemorrhaging in anyone who values DRY. Although, Java-type people who enjoy seeing how many millions of lines of useless boilerplate garbage their IDE can spit out while still accomplishing practically nothing will probably love it.

- Everything must be in a class (or an enum)...for no apparent reason other than, apparently, to ape Java (and why anyone would ever want to ape Java is beyond me).

- There are a lot of PITA PHP idiosyncrasies that Haxe doesn't really shield you from. (Example: Some dumbass sysadmin decided your PHP5 installation should have magic quotes enabled by default? You, as the app developer, still have to work around it. Haxe theoretically could automatically add code that detects and reverses it as best as possible. But it doesn't.)

- I'm beginning to question the sanity of the guy in charge: http://code.google.com/p/haxe/issues/detail?id=106 (He blatantly breaks basic browser behavior for quite obviously no benefit whatsoever, he's spoon-fed a trivial fix, and...he passes it off as a user issue? WTF? Granted, it's not a major issue, but seriously, the lack of logic involved in coming to a conclusion like that just stuns me.)

But yea, while Haxe has its issues, I'm still a huge proponent of the idea of compiling real languages does to the garbage ones when you're forced to use a garbage one. In fact, my Goldie project ( www.dsource.org/projects/goldie ) has that sort of thing as one of it's original motivating factors and one of its ultimate goals.

However, I'm not convinced that compiling a full real language down to browser-client-JavaScript is a great idea...

For one thing, something like that is going to have overhead (and JS is sluggish enough already), unless it goes the Haxe route and actually designs the language around the idea of very easy/direct translation to the base language, which of course, limits how much of an improvement the new language can actually be.

The other issue I have with it is that I feel *VERY* strongly that JavaScript should *only be used sparingly*. Specifically, any web app *should* be designed and built from the start without any use of JavaScript whatsoever. This is possible 99.99% of the time (In fact, most of the times people think they need JS for something, they're full of crap. Like button rollover images, for instance: CSS handles rollover images FAR better than any JS engine ever will.) *Then* and *only* then, you can toss in little snippets of optional JS here and there to clean up various things for people who choose to have JS enabled. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I feel very strongly that that's the *only* good way to design a web app, anything else is just plain crap design. (Correction: there's no such thing as a good way to design a web app, because "good web app" is a blatant contradiction of terms since the web is an absolute shit platform for applications *period*. (/me waits for Adam Ruppe's DWS with baited breath :) ) So I guess I should have said that's the *closest* it can possibly get to being a "good" way to design a web app.)

Whew!
...
Can you tell I've been itching to get all that off my chest for quite some
time? ;)

Nick Sabalausky:
> I use Haxe for any and all PHP and Flash development

I have an OT question: Haxe and similar things add another layer between the code you write and the program that gets run. Isn't this extra distance (and the semantic adaptations it requires) cause of problems? For example when you put a bug in your Haxe code.

Bye,
bearophile

"Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:hqljod$cad$1@digitalmars.com...
> "Justin Johansson" <no@spam.com> wrote in message news:hqk7ve$2ouj$1@digitalmars.com...
>>
>> my current thinking seems to be aligning with others that JavaScript should be seen as the new "binary", albeit in text form, that HLLs should be compiling down to for "webapp" development.
>>
>>
>
> I believe *very* strongly in using a REAL language that then gets compiled down to worthless crap like PHP, ActionScript, etc., whenever such worthless crap platforms are necessary. Which is, of course, necessary FAR too often when you do web development, as I do.
>

Of course, I also believe very strongly that if a language or platform is crap (browser-JavaScript), then the *real* correct solution is to fix or replace it rather than just paint over it with another layer. But, hey! That's not how we do things here in the internet technology world! Just slap on another half-baked design to cover up last year's half-baked design! Repeat ad infinitum. (Am I the only one that learned anything from the old "There was an old lady who swallowed a..." nursery rhyme?).

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 09:18:45PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> I believe *very* strongly in using a REAL language that then gets compiled down to worthless crap like PHP, ActionScript, etc., whenever such worthless crap platforms are necessary. Which is, of course, necessary FAR too often when you do web development, as I do.

If you are stuck in a situation where you need to do a web app, but are
allowed to use compiled CGI binaries, I've written cgi and mysql modules
for D2 over the last few weekends. (Have to do almost everything D related
purely on weekends to satisfy my contract's copyright assignment clause. Ugh.)

They are in here:
http://arsdnet.net/dcode/

The mysql module sucks, but it works and already beats the crap out of PHP.

If CGI is an option, D rocks for it. If not, I know your pain :( (Though hopefully ending soon - I've been trying to sell my clients on D, and the big one seems excited about it! With his dedicated server, using cgi is easy. Very cool.)

> The other issue I have with it is that I feel *VERY* strongly that JavaScript should *only be used sparingly*. Specifically, any web app *should* be designed and built from the start without any use of JavaScript whatsoever.

Amen!

> (/me waits for Adam Ruppe's DWS with baited breath :) )

Me too. I haven't been able to work on it for months now, but this big paying project is about to launch, so maybe my time will finally free up soon.

-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net

"bearophile" <bearophileHUGS@lycos.com> wrote in message news:hqlko7$don$1@digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky:
>> I use Haxe for any and all PHP and Flash development
>
> I have an OT question: Haxe and similar things add another layer between the code you write and the program that gets run. Isn't this extra distance (and the semantic adaptations it requires) cause of problems? For example when you put a bug in your Haxe code.
>

Sometimes I get errors from the haxe compiler, and sometimes I get errors from the PHP runtime. But if I weren't using Haxe then all the errors would be from the PHP runtime, so I count that as a net improvement.

About the only problem I've seen from the extra layer of abstraction is that the PHP runtime errors show the file/line of haxe's php output instead of the file/line in the original haxe source. So you have to go to the php file that haxe generated to see where the problem occurred. However:

1. At worst, that's only a minor inconvenience.

2. It's not a completely insurmountable problem. I can think of lots of ways that problem could be mitigated, if not outright eliminated. For instance, Haxe could output a file-by-file/line-by-line mapping from the php output to the haxe source and another program could take the that info and the error message and translate back. Or PHP could add some feature or features to help in that regard (ie, something comparable to how D's "#line" feature exists to make it easy for a theoretical D preprocessor to not screw up the line numbers output by DMD). Or, in some cases, Haxe could just tighten up it's static analysis and not let the issue get to the run-time stage.

Does that answer your question?

"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.54.1271813929.3522.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 09:18:45PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> I believe *very* strongly in using a REAL language that then gets
>> compiled
>> down to worthless crap like PHP, ActionScript, etc., whenever such
>> worthless
>> crap platforms are necessary. Which is, of course, necessary FAR too
>> often
>> when you do web development, as I do.
>
> If you are stuck in a situation where you need to do a web app, but are allowed to use compiled CGI binaries, I've written cgi and mysql modules for D2 over the last few weekends. (Have to do almost everything D related purely on weekends to satisfy my contract's copyright assignment clause. Ugh.)
>
> They are in here:
> http://arsdnet.net/dcode/
>
> The mysql module sucks, but it works and already beats the crap out of PHP.
>

Cool.

I just found out earlier today that my web host ( 100megswebhosting.com ) allows arbitrary CGI (ie this is the host *my* site is on, not any of my clients unfortunately...but I've been very happy with my host for a long time so I've been thinking about trying to go with either their reseller program, or at least affiliate program, for future clients, assuming the client will go for it. They seem to usually have their own hosting already though, and then I have to put up with whatever hosting idiots they decided to hire :/ ). But anyway, my host is x86 linux, so I probably won't have to deal with cross-compiling. Unfortunately, they don't do any sort of FastCGI, though :(

But I've been wanting to whip up my own blog^H^H^H^Hpersonal-site software for awhile now, so I'm deciding between D and Haxe. I love D, of course, but Haxe has HaxeIgniter, a rails-like framework that I'm already neck-deep into for one of my clients. I'd like to make a rails-like framework for D, but that would take time, so I think I'm leaning towards "Haxe for now, and re-write in D if I ever get a chance."

> If CGI is an option, D rocks for it. If not, I know your pain :( (Though hopefully ending soon - I've been trying to sell my clients on D, and the big one seems excited about it! With his dedicated server, using cgi is easy. Very cool.)
>

/me jealous ;)

>> The other issue I have with it is that I feel *VERY* strongly that
>> JavaScript should *only be used sparingly*. Specifically, any web app
>> *should* be designed and built from the start without any use of
>> JavaScript
>> whatsoever.
>
> Amen!
>

You might be interested in this. Maybe you've already known but I just came
across it a few weeks ago:
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/

The FAQ is pretty old, and although it seems to frowns on mandatory JS it's not particularly clear about that point (it mainly focuses on browser-choice), but I thought it was pretty cool. Yet another of of my "5,000,000 projects that I want to do, if I ever have the time" is to start an updated version of that which, among other things, emphasizes not trying to cram unnecessary JS down people's throats.

>> (/me waits for Adam Ruppe's DWS with baited breath :) )
>
> Me too. I haven't been able to work on it for months now, but this big
> paying
> project is about to launch, so maybe my time will finally free up soon.
>

I have to say, I've always been slightly jealous that you beat me to the proof-of-concept ;)  I swear, we both came to the same general design idea independently. I keep spreading myself too thin though.

On 4/20/2010 6:26 PM, Justin Johansson wrote:
> Eric Poggel wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> So I guess the thrust of my topic tonight is, could D somehow reinvent
>>> itself to fame and fortune in the high-level-language-for-JavaScript
>>> space?
>>>
>>> Justin Johansson
>>
>> I've done a significant amount of web-app development myself, but to
>> me this seems like a bad idea. If I want to sit down and write
>> something quickly and don't care about performance, JavaScript or Haxe
>> are great languages to do it in and can be more productive than D.
>> However, even the best JavaScript vm's (like V8) are on average 10x
>> slower than C++/D. So if performance matters, I always chose D.
>>
>> If I write D to run on a JavaScript VM, I lose both the productivity
>> of JavaScript and the speed of D.
>
> Thanks for the reality check; probably it's a silly idea. Nevertheless
> I'm glad to have inquired as, even though I like the idea of optional
> static typing in Haxe, I'll be reconsidering whether using Haxe in a new
> web project is a good idea also. One thing I can't figure out is why
> Haxe is not as popular as it "should" be. Maybe for similar reasons as
> you say?
>
> Cheers
> Justin

I haven't used Haxe, but why reconsider using it?

I should've also clarified that I'm usually more productive in JavaScript for small projects because it usually takes less code for the same thing, but more so in D for large ones due to the benefits of static typing.