High Productivity Languages

2010-07-15T06:31:00.001-07:00

Today I started reading Google's paper about Native Client (NaCl). NaCl is an extension for browsers which lets you run Native Code in the browser. NaCl tries to verify that the code you run isn't malicious and won't hurt your computer. Back to the track, in the Introduction of the paper it is stated that JavaScript is a High Productivity Language.

Generally High Productivity Languages (HPL) are dynamic scripted languages. Popular examples, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc. But if you take a look at JavaScript from another background, you will probably think that it isn't a HPL. The simple reason is that it has no standards for various parts of the languages or the syntax looks just odd. For example, constructors in JavaScript are all self coded and every coder can do it differently. You can pass functions as arguments, but this looks kinda odd (when you to compare it to Ruby blocks).

Actually it is really odd that Google's NaCl paper states that it a HPL, since Google itself did create Google WebKit, which let's you write Web Application all in Java (the Client/Browser side is compiled to minimalistic JavaScript).

Maybe JavaScript is a decent HPL, but if you code an Application in 2 different languages, using for example PHP for the server side and JavaScript for the client side, you will face some serious problems. You have to double code functions, no code re-usage. It makes your life just harder.

So, when it comes to developing Web Applications I have to state that JavaScript is not a HPL, since the server side is a different language all the time (please don't tell me that YOU really used JavaScript for the server side too) and this decreases the productivity significantly.

Andrius Bentkus

High Productivity Languages