

On reducing the size of compressed Javascript - mark_h
http://timepedia.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-reducing-size-of-compressed.html

======
stcredzero
Since Javascript VMs have been making such strides lately, I've been thinking
of implementing a Smalltalk VM on top of Javascript. If you JIT bytecodes to
Javascript source, you'll be running at the "native" speed of the Javascript,
and Smalltalk without the source code is extraordinarily compact. (About 10X
and sometimes 100X over the equivalent C++ code.) But bytecodes fully
decompile into source, just without the temporary variable names. A dictionary
of the temp names for each method can be dynamically loaded later in the
background, or just applied to stack traces at a later time by devs to aid
debugging. To get even more compression, you can replace the message symbols
with integers.

This would be a relatively easy task. A Smalltalk bytecode VM is really just a
loop with a size 256 case statement, plus garbage collection. The GC and
object allocation could just use Javascript's. Likewise, the UI could just
piggyback on top of Javascript and HTML.

~~~
mark_h
I'm sure you've seen it, but just in case you haven't:
<http://research.sun.com/projects/lively/> (basically a smalltalk environment
in javascript/DOM, rather than the VM in javascript). There's a good tech-talk
by Dan Ingalls on it that's worth watching.

------
trapper
For those that haven't taken a serious look at why google have built a lot of
their applications in gwt (wave, health, adwords etc), and require google-like
ui's, I'd recommend learning. Keep an open mind (find out WHY java is used,
and what benefits you gain from it).

GWT is amazing, and the engineers involved like Ray & Scott Blum are second to
none.

