[GTALUG] Programming languages (in comparison?) - -was Learn Swift for Apple/iOS. Learn ??? for Google/Android.

Clifford Ilkay cilkay at gmail.com
Sun Dec 10 18:52:47 EST 2017


On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 6:13 PM, o1bigtenor via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Jamon Camisso via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2017-12-10 06:28 AM, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
>> > So I know precious little about programming languages. I looked up 'Rust
>> > programming language'.
>> >
>> > Wikipedia (which can often be useful if not always totally accurate)
>> > listed it as:
>> >
>> >  " . . . a systems programming language sponsored by Mozilla Research,
>> > which describes it as a "safe, concurrent, practical language,"
>> > supporting functional and imperative-procedural paradigms. Rust is
>> > syntactically similar to C++, but its designers intend it to provide
>> > better memory safety while maintaining performance."
>> >
>> > OK - - - sponsored by Mozilla (AIUI that sort means that its their baby)
>> > and its to '. . . provide better memory safety . . ." .
>> > Well given how Mozilla products work for me - - - they don't really know
>> > anything about how to use memory. The only way I can keep using FF is to
>> > kill it every couple three days and then restart it. Somehow that isn't
>> > my idea of memory usage done well so if that's Rust - - - well then
>> > that's a total non-starter for me!
>>
>> I think you'll be surprised at how well the latest Firefox 57 performs.
>> It's their first release featuring core browser components written in
>> Rust.
>>
>> Fast and stable for me. Give it a try and see if your characterization
>> above still holds.
>>
>
> Somehow - - - - I've been hearing similar for about what - - - maybe about
> 4 or 5
> years. You really think its true this time? (After watching maybe 20+
> upgrades and
> its still the same mess for how it works - - - I'm more than a little
> skeptical!)
>
> Dee
>


The problems that you describe are very unlikely to have anything to do
with the language that was used to implement the browser or even Firefox
specifically. I have the same issues with Chrome sometimes and I tend to
have dozens of open tabs with a Session Saver extension, which means the
entire browsing history of dozens of tabs has to be managed. The culprit in
many of the browser crashes seems to be JavaScript heavy sites. I use some
very complex Google Sheets and I notice I get more freezes in Chrome when I
do. I'll take the occasional crash or freeze in exchange for the ability to
have a spreadsheet that I can share with collaborators. I also use the
Suspender extension. That suspends tabs that aren't active to cut down on
resource consumption. It seems to do that well enough. Clicking on the tab
to make it active and then clicking on the body of the page wakes up the
tab.

The days of HTML and CSS only sites are gone. Most sites rely on
JavaScript, sometimes for frivolous things, but often for useful things.
The modern web stack is horrifically complex. The JS engines in browsers
are relatively slow to implement new ECMAScript (ES) releases so we end up
using transpilers to write modern JS/ES that transpile to the older
versions supported by browsers. In some cases, we're not even using JS/ES.
We're using other languages that transpile to ES <
https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/list-of-languages-that-compile-to-js>.
That it works as well as it does is a minor miracle.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay

+1 647-778-8696
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