The 'death' being discussed here means that JavaScript becomes the substrate, a state where you don't use it directly, but it's everywhere. And that has truly come to pass.
Flutter exists too, and supports iOS and Android in addition to the desktop OSes. The dev time is pretty fast too imo.
That said, idk how the performance compares to Electron or Native apps.
As a small team, optimizing for "actually getting the thing shipped" is so much better than optimizing for speed anyway.
"i can't program, i only make CRUD apps"
"i don't write anything that requires computation"
"i do server side rendering on a serverless platform"
in reality rails runs circles around typescript for productivity for CRUD/webapps.
The benefit of JavaScript is, that, after Google really pushed it to its limit with V8 and of course NodeJS made it a backend dream, that it is ubiquitous and once written usable everywhere, much kinda like PDF.
Its versatility gave it the advantage over WebAssembly to this day, because it is not as widespread available as JavaScript.
I agree with you, that JavaScript itself is nowadays tantamount with TypeScript - what a giant leap this has been. Angular (2) was the unsung hero here. Angular was harshly criticized when they went TypeScript right from the beginning while still offering a native JavaScript version as well (which was basically unusable to be honest).
It is funny, that the last hideout not featuring TS as their default option is React, while more and more major integral projects like NextJS rely out of the box on TS. ReactJS will fall, too. It wouldn't be the first time regarding innovations coming from other projects. Again Angular is leading the innovation while ReactJS is a follower.
You rarely can go wrong with JavaScript and Python, I would say.
This is a pedantic point, but that's not really what the definition of compiler is as much as a common understanding of it. By definition, it just translates one language into another, and a human-readable to human-readable translation is still a compiler ("transpiler" is more slang than actual formal terminology).
This might just be one of those already lost battles, but like "crypto" being used to mean "digital money" rather than "cryptography", I feel like the new terminology is weird and unnecessary, so it's something I have trouble adapting to even though I rationally know that usage evolves over time and sometimes the words I like less will become the norm.
> This is a pedantic point, but that's not really what the definition of compiler is as much as a common understanding of it. By definition, it just translates one language into another
The history and etymology doesn't support that definition, either; that's just another "common [mis]understanding" of the term. It's in the name. A compiler produces a compilation—an aggregate of multiple subroutines, including user-supplied ones and some by the system/programming environment, transformed into a single program for a given target.
(You're describing the process of "autocoding", a job that every compiler does, and a term that predates "transpiler" but that no one uses because they favor stretching the more frequently encountered term "compiler" for their use case.)
I also agree with your opinion on Angular.
But I like React, so I'm a little sad. Still, I mostly agree with you.
The reasons you criticize React are exactly the reasons I love React. Because it changes slowly, even someone like me can keep up. (Just kidding.)
More a nightmare than a dream. It lead to the terrible practice of tightly coupling frontend and backend code bases that led to inevitable pain. The language barrier between front/back-ends was a key aspect of web-dev that allowed it to a foothold vs. previous, unsuccessful attempts. Fortunately this practice hasn't taken over and sane architectures are still prevalent.
Depends on how much you care about your user's computers.
Not sure what timeline you’re living in, but people absolutely still write tons of JS, and WebAssembly has yet to take over as a commonly used runtime for web applications. You can definitely find examples of companies building on it, but don’t mistake that for the kind of sea change Gary was describing here.
I am hesitant to call that "support". If even Meta can't get their Electron application to work reliably, who can? WhatsApp client for macOS is awful and it's getting worse. Discord is awful and it's getting worse. Spotify works better when running through the browser. At this point, when I see that the application is using Electron, I am assuming it's not supported on my OS and I move on.
But why make an app when websites is enough? And I don't need to run n web browsers for that.
Not really. his two predictions are
1) that EVERYTHING will be running on some javascript assembler. We are getting incrementally closer with things like firecracker, but plenty of stuff still runs on bare metal, and it doesn't seem like it's going away so easily.
2) that no one will write javascript anymore. I don't think typescript is different enough to count.
https://spidermonkey.dev/blog/2026/05/20/saying-goodbye-to-a...
iirc, v8 never had any special compilation path for it to begin with.
Tcl with TK or Free Pascal on Lazarus
Let's fix that!
ASMOP
Is really that simple compared to a normal cross platform web application written in (for example, but there are multiple frameworks) QT?
I mean, sure you have to write JavaScript and not C++, but in the end is that more simple? Maybe to start with yes, but then you get into tooling, typescript, multiple build steps, etc that makes it probably more complex than a old boring QT program in C++. And nowadays with most software not even written by humans, does the argument "but javascript is simpler than C++" really holds?
It's absurd than we could have very performant computers, and we still have the performance of 10 years ago because the added resources in modern PCs gets wasted by programs that need to run an entire Chrome instance to do basic stuff. I mean, open 4 programs that use Electron (Discord, Spotify, VSCode, WhatsApp desktop) on a modern PC and you consumed most of the available RAM just for them.
Precisely because I don't write it directly, I think what I need is not C++ but JavaScript. Thread safety and verification responsibilities in C++ are, in my opinion, the biggest bottlenecks in the age of AI development.
I'm tolerant of the brief pauses caused by JavaScript's garbage collector, but users are not tolerant of crashes. That's the key.
And while the core engine should be in Rust or C++, the code presented to the user? Yes, I think Electron is the right choice. The reason is that it's a familiar UI. If you present an unfamiliar new UI, users have to relearn it. But web UI is already familiar to most generations. From this perspective, I think Electron is far better than C++ in terms of design. I don't believe performance always wins.
Websites have actually long been a great cross-platform mechanism
Just a shame about the giant browser you have to load first
But even document rendering with light scripting is not trivial so yeah, the required browser is the bottleneck.
I always wonder (layman question): couldn't native Electron apps (and similar technologies) save a great deal of RAM by using the same sandboxing model for apps that browsers use for tabs, instead of fully-fledged instances?
Was that an idea that Tauri also tries to implement, or am I remembering this wrongly?
Incidentally it’s also a great introduction to thinking as a functional programmer if you are used to imperative logic with state spread all over the place.
1. He calls Array(16) and then talks about there being 16 separators. Of course, there are only 15. This kinda breaks the Batman joke.
2. He writes {}+[] and claims that he's adding a list to an object, then mocks the fact that it gives a different result than []+{} which gives [object Object]. In reality, if you write ({}+[]), you also get [object Object]. I'll leave it as a puzzle for you to figure out why {}+[] is different. (Hint: Gurer vf ab bowrpg gurer.)
> {}+[]
'[object Object]'
> []+{}
'[object Object]'
* With the one exception of BLAS which is widely used via NumPy
It's like PHP, it will never die.
I predict that PHP will live a long life, but not as long as C, and I predict JavaScript will have a lifespan closer to C's than PHP's.
And now with typescript and running it in the server... I'd rather just use Java.
There were two buttons, one labeled "Our Web Site", the other labeled "Our Competitor's Web Site".
When you moved the mouse over the "Our Competitor's Web Site" button, it would quickly slide out from under your cursor before you could click it!
Then when you stopped moving your mouse, the "Our Web Site" button would slyly slide right underneath your mouse!
Dammit Microsoft!!! ;)
webOS and Firefox OS was at least 20 years ahead of its time.
The thesis is that javascript-compatible source will be the substrate of the future. A javascript engine, though one highly optimized to efficiently interpret a compatible subset, is a potential universal platform of the future despite generic javascript being a terrible substrate.
WASM fundamentally rejects this by creating a new javascript-incompatible substrate that is actually designed to be a low level target. Claiming WASM is confirmation of the thesis makes as much sense as claiming that a future where everybody has a Rust interpreter in the browser is confirmation of the thesis.
If you are arguing that, then you are just arguing that web browsers will run code in some form in some language as they already do. As the video is clearly discussing a “surprising” possible future, it makes little sense for it to be consistent with literally business as usual and literally every possible future.
They have a lot in common. So it's not at all wrong to say WASM fulfills the prophecy. It's an iteration of the concept that resulted in JS as a compile target and later asm.js.
Just asking out of curiosity.
Also, the screenshots I've seen of webOS makes me long for a revival... not only on smart TVs
At the time I just thought it was funny. Now I find it surprising how much of these ideas ended up sticking around.
It's only 2 years predates this talk in the title.