"""The position of Dart guys is simple: by compiling an arbitrary language (Dart in this case) to x86 (or whatever native arch the browser is running on) they can get a much faster code than compiling to an abstract VM, like JVM or .NET or parrot."""
And, I believe, the position of the web community at large is: we much rather have a VM than a faster lame language with small chances of success over js.
"""It's not a controversial statement: JVM ultimately compiles to x86 too, so whatever optimization tricks JVM does to generate fast code can be used by a compiler that goes directly from source to x86. The opposite, however, is not true: JVM does introduce an additional layer and fixes in stone many things other than just the instruction set that make compilation of some scenarios from jvm to efficient x86 impossible. And you can't fix that without introducing incompatibilities i.e. breaking existing code."""
A problem which a new "web vm" will NOT have. Being new, and able to go any way it likes...
"""For example, because Dart paper mentioned in passing that JRuby can't be made as fast as native Ruby, he tears into that because JRuby is actually close to Ruby 1.8 in performance. Which, of course, proves nothing. The best JavaScript implementation on JVM is on par, performance-wise, with the old, pre-V8 JavaScript interpreters."""
Actually JRuby was already faster than Ruby 1.8/1.9, and with the latest changed to the VM (invokedynamic etc), is around 3 (THREE) times faster that plain Ruby. Check the recent HN story on that.
"""Nutter latches to the unfortunate example Dart paper gave but completely ignores other examples that do show that targeting x86 is, indeed, 10-20x win for dynamic languages."""
And, I believe, the position of the web community at large is: we much rather have a VM than a faster lame language with small chances of success over js.
"""It's not a controversial statement: JVM ultimately compiles to x86 too, so whatever optimization tricks JVM does to generate fast code can be used by a compiler that goes directly from source to x86. The opposite, however, is not true: JVM does introduce an additional layer and fixes in stone many things other than just the instruction set that make compilation of some scenarios from jvm to efficient x86 impossible. And you can't fix that without introducing incompatibilities i.e. breaking existing code."""
A problem which a new "web vm" will NOT have. Being new, and able to go any way it likes...
"""For example, because Dart paper mentioned in passing that JRuby can't be made as fast as native Ruby, he tears into that because JRuby is actually close to Ruby 1.8 in performance. Which, of course, proves nothing. The best JavaScript implementation on JVM is on par, performance-wise, with the old, pre-V8 JavaScript interpreters."""
Actually JRuby was already faster than Ruby 1.8/1.9, and with the latest changed to the VM (invokedynamic etc), is around 3 (THREE) times faster that plain Ruby. Check the recent HN story on that.
"""Nutter latches to the unfortunate example Dart paper gave but completely ignores other examples that do show that targeting x86 is, indeed, 10-20x win for dynamic languages."""
I seriously doubt the "10-20x win". References?