news.ycombinator.com• Jul 4, 2011• 1 min read
Ask HN: Is JavaScript Java.next()?Like you all I digest the daily collection of JavaScript-created genius on HN with a little bit of "god I hope I don't need to learn how to do that..." and a whole lot of open-mouthed gawking.Some JavaScript trends in the last few weeks that I didn't know was possible: PDF Rendering [1] MP3 Decoding / Playback [9] Parsing/Rendering RAGE Game Levels [2][3] Parsing EXIF Data from JPG/TIFF Images [4] Physics Simulations [11] Animated/Interactive Insanity (Thanks Ben Vanik!) [5] Servers! (Nodejs) [6] Video Games [7] Why isn't any of this being done at the same scale and fervor with Flash? Why not Java Applets? JavaFX? Air? Silverlight?JavaScript seems to have something going for it that only Java before it had: a VM arms race involving all the major tech companies in the industry.The first 4-7 years of Java's life was punctuated by almost yearly (notable) performance jumps as Sun, IBM and BEA battled each other for the VM crown (Microsoft bowed out early after the lawsuit so I won't includ