You see this today with all of the folks protesting adding closures to Java, with the crappy Java Generics introduced in 1.5, with Internet Explorer being stuck in the past for fear of “breaking the web”, or breaking intranets. You see it with OpenGL 3.0, recently announced. People waited for AGES for a radically redesigned API, and what they got in the end was something akin to Harmony. Why? Legacy. No one wants to risk breaking existing apps.

Essentially, hands are being tied by decisions made in Netscape 2 and IE4 with respect to semantics. In those days, browser vendors would just introduce a proprietary change, without needing a commitee to approve it. We’re stuck with those decisions today.

This all seems to suggest that all future improvements to the browser will be bound by the mistakes make previously. They’ll innovate around the edges: syntactic sugar, storage, messaging, video, canvas, maybe 3D. No one seems willing to deprecate previously undesirable behavior with another mode switch.

I mean, it’s not that bad, but it seems kind depressing thinking about what the Web will be like in 10 years, in 2018. Will we still be limited by what was decided in 1995-7?

I would caution people to look at what happened with OpenGL vs DirectX.

If the Open Web guys were really gutsy, they’d make Javascript syntax just one of many syntaxes that can run on top of a standardized p-code interpreter. The problem I see is that JS 1.x semantics are essentially being enshrined as the fundamental browser VM semantics. Is this what we want going up against Silverlight and Flash in 5 years? 10 years? (It’s fine if you don’t want to use optional static typing, but why impose this restriction on everyone else?)

I think there is far too much focus on syntax because of language bias. The browser should really be a high performance VM for manipulating a DOM layout engine, optimized for speed.

And no, as is frequently stated, a more abstract intermediate representation does not mean you can’t “View Source”.

It’s great to have all the big players in the room, but one issue that they all seem to lose sight of is adaptability. In contrast, ActionScript has shown faster maturity and language development than any other language [{missing reference}]. Why? Because Flash players have a tendency (understatement) of being up to date.

I wish there was a solution, but until all browsers surrender their engines to an Open Standard & Source Engine (do I need to trademark this?) and all browsers require their users to [automatically] upgrade (not a problem if **all** browsers require this).

It’s extreme — I know. One can dream, however.