> all you're really saying is that every other language should be a second-class citizen to JavaScript.
Every platform has a "native" form. On your x86 desktop, it's x86 assembly, which everything is a second-class citizen to in the sense it needs to be compiled into it. On the web, the native form is JavaScript.
It has to be something fairly high-level because the web is CPU and OS-agnostic, which JS is.
The only practical concern that can be here, is whether JS is good enough for this task - if languages compiled into it run efficiently enough. It can be, if browsers continue to improve JS and if we all improve compilers into JS. So far little work has been done on both of those, but there is starting to be effort there.
> Emscripten is a cool technical hack, but why the fuck is it 2012 and we have to compile C++ to JavaScript?
We need to compile into something platform-independent, memory-safe and standardized. There isn't currently a better option than JavaScript, because each other option has major downsides. So does JS, to be sure, but overall it's a wash, and JS is already there so it wins.
Every platform has a "native" form. On your x86 desktop, it's x86 assembly, which everything is a second-class citizen to in the sense it needs to be compiled into it. On the web, the native form is JavaScript.
It has to be something fairly high-level because the web is CPU and OS-agnostic, which JS is.
The only practical concern that can be here, is whether JS is good enough for this task - if languages compiled into it run efficiently enough. It can be, if browsers continue to improve JS and if we all improve compilers into JS. So far little work has been done on both of those, but there is starting to be effort there.
> Emscripten is a cool technical hack, but why the fuck is it 2012 and we have to compile C++ to JavaScript?
We need to compile into something platform-independent, memory-safe and standardized. There isn't currently a better option than JavaScript, because each other option has major downsides. So does JS, to be sure, but overall it's a wash, and JS is already there so it wins.