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Herding Code 189: Gary Bernhardt on The Birth and Death of JavaScript

At NDC London, Jon and K Scott talk to Gary Bernhardt about his talk, The Birth and Death of JavaScript.

Download / Listen: Herding Code 189: Gary Bernhardt on The Birth and Death of JavaScript

Show Notes:

  • (00:15) The talk occurs in the year 2035. JavaScript is now pronounced differently, and there has been another world war.
  • (01:20) Jon ran over to the talk when he heard (via Twitter) that Gary was (or will be, it’s all so confusing) mentioning Singularity.
  • (02:20) Jon asks about Gary’s references to the performance improvements gained by turning off hardware protection. Gary and Jon discuss how Singularity and the (yet to be developed) Asm language offer high performance due to this approach.
  • (04:10) Jon asks why JavaScript has died, since Asm is universal. Gary mentions some of the problems – many historical – with JavaScript. And Gary should know, he’s famous for the "wat" talk showing several JavaScript insanities.
  • (05:37) Jon asks for some reasons why JavaScript had to die. Gary explains how it’s really just running on inertia now, and that it’d be preferable to use a better designed language like Clojure.
  • (06:30) Jon asks what we’re writing our code in, now that it’s compiling to Asm. Gary doesn’t specify that – it’s not really necessary to pick one, and he doesn’t need to alienate anyone unnecessarily.
  • (07:45) Jon asks if Asm is a binary format. Gary clarifies that it’s the JavaScript subset that was proposed in 2012.
  • (08:54) Jon asks if Asm is perfect, or just good enough. Gary talks about how both Asm and the HTML DOM (which also has become universal in 2035) are full of flaws, but they’re better than fragmentation. Jon and Gary talk abouthow
  • (10:45) K Scott says this all sounds plausible, all that’s needed is time. So, why 2035? Gary talks about his reasoning… it could happen faster. He talks about some core services moving into operating system kernels, and Jon and K Scott agree.
  • (12:55) Jon applauds Gary’s 25-30 minute talk length.
  • (13:15) Jon mentions some of the interesting audience questions at the end of the talk. Gary talks about some of the most interesting. All of them were pretty easy except for the question of parallel execution.
  • (15:20) There’s a discussion about the limitations of x86 architecture and parallelism.
  • (16:10) Jon asks about some of the other things Gary’s up to – there are the Destroy All Software screencasts and a consumer product Gary’s working on but isn’t ready to announce yet.
  • (16:40) K Scott asks Gary about relaxation and recreation. Gary says that he’d become really preoccupied with things that were bad in software, and it was stressing him out. He’s made three changes: intentional social interactions, crossfit and playing guitar. All three have helped him be less angry about the state of software… which is all hacks on x86, when we get down to it.

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