sdegutis 2015-12-05 15:06 UTC link

Wow. They're really serious about changing their philosophy aren't they. Using Github for their stuff, making and open sourcing Visual Studio Code, other stuff I can't remember, and now this.

gtirloni 2015-12-05 15:09 UTC link

Edge is certainly much faster than Chrome/Firefox for JS processing that I wish I could use it on Linux. Looks like that might be happening. Really great news.

I didn't know Node.js could use anything but v8. This is also very nice.

Sir_Cmpwn 2015-12-05 15:09 UTC link

Wow, I'll admit that I haven't been looking at Edge simply because of the IE stigma, but this blog post impressed me. 90% ES6 support? More so than Babel? Awesome. And it's getting open sourced! I hope to see it ported to the Unixes. Perhaps Servo+Chakra could be a thing?

miralabs 2015-12-05 15:10 UTC link

I wonder if in the future node will enable swappable js engine edit: ok just found this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534138

adrianlmm 2015-12-05 15:11 UTC link

I'd like to see Node.js using Chkara by default, V8 developers have showed that they don't care much about Node.js, they are more interested in Chrome, and MS have showed more interest in Node.js than Google and I'm sure it will be better for all, fingers crossed.

oblio 2015-12-05 15:13 UTC link

I have a somewhat off topic question: is there anything in the design of Javascript that mandates single-threadedness? Could any Javascript engine implement threads?

I'm asking because I'm wondering if Node.js's evented approach is the only way to do things.

1971genocide 2015-12-05 15:15 UTC link

As a mere mortal - How hard would it be for a day programmer to built something cool like an JavaScript engine ?

I sometimes have crazy thoughts about the world ending.

How hard would it be to built your own javascript engine from scratch ?

roddux 2015-12-05 15:17 UTC link

Wait, Edge does better on ES6 coverage than both Chrome and Firefox? Microsoft have seriously stepped up their game, especially seeing as it's now neck and neck for performance with Chrome: http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/10/browser-benchmark-battle-s...

mschuster91 2015-12-05 15:47 UTC link

What in blazes?! Okay MS, that's an impressive step.

I'm waiting for the first ports to Linux or, hell, a native port of IE... given the trend, it's not unreasonable that MS will open source a load of stuff.

jfoster 2015-12-05 15:55 UTC link

No mention of license. Is it safe to assume it'll be Apache or MIT?

japhyr 2015-12-05 16:08 UTC link

We have a bunch of laptops at school running Windows 10 with Edge. Students can't copy and paste into Google Docs while using Edge.

Was this a deliberate choice by Microsoft to steer people away from Google products, or is it something more benign than that?

vonklaus 2015-12-05 16:12 UTC link

I find myself hoping Microsoft makes a comeback and they are really doing a lot to win developers which I think is the right move. Obviously, they are a huge platform and developers inherently will be using it but they have taken a lot of great steps like open sourcing this engine as well as other projects.

The Code editor they released is built on Atom Electron and seems more performant than Atom in the few experiences I have had switching between them.

If they can continue to gain trust in the community and improve their UI they could become great again. You can tell they have thought about how to do this. A few years ago now I remember the guys from the IE team did an AMA about the new explorer IIRC it was 10. They talked about cross browser compatibility and wanted developer feedback.

I am not sure if they are actually an "underdog" but I find myself feeling like that, and hoping they can get it together.

d0m 2015-12-05 16:12 UTC link

Out of curiosity, why rebuilding a whole new engine rather than using/improving V8?

cdnsteve 2015-12-05 17:59 UTC link

Well I guess we can all start using ES6, no need to compile to ES5 anymore.

yuhong 2015-12-05 19:25 UTC link

I was wishing that MS Open Tech could make the other JS engines Windows x64 ABI compliant including SEH for a while now.

rakstrooper 2015-12-05 19:29 UTC link

Here's hoping an android port Will be made by microsoft

zobzu 2015-12-05 22:41 UTC link

There's no such thing as 'firefox alpha', its 'firefox nightly'

Kinda odd to see when they get the rest right and they're engineers. feels like they dont know firefox o.O

datashovel 2015-12-05 23:31 UTC link

Microsoft is slowly but surely winning me as a fan. Keep doing things that matter, show that you're committed to the open source community, and continue to help push the web forward and I think nothing but good things will come from this.

Inthenameofmine 2015-12-05 15:09 UTC link

If they go full SaaS I would not be surprized if they go Open Source on Windows itself, seriously. I think for that to happen Nadella needs one big win/turnaround and the shareholders might be on board.

outside1234 2015-12-05 15:10 UTC link

I was literally blown away by Visual Studio Code. It is an amazing editor. I haven't opened sublime since.

nly 2015-12-05 15:14 UTC link

Servo is a rendering engine written in Rust, why would it choose Chakra, which is written in C++, over WebKit, which is written in C++?

ameen 2015-12-05 15:14 UTC link

They're aware of the permeance of open-source in current tech scene and want to be a part of it than fight it. Not many startups (except for DreamSpark, BizSpark, and Seattle/Redmond based ones) build on MS stack nowadays. MS audits are dreaded (thanks to Oracle for showing the way) and a diversion for a growing startup. It's better to steer clear of MS & other proprietary tech whilst building a startup.

They're embracing startups since they need them and are changing their business models to cater better to smaller startups than the behemoth enterprises with Office 365, Azure, etc.

Klathmon 2015-12-05 15:14 UTC link

I've hoped for this since it's inception.

It gives the benefits of having multiple competing implementations but unlike the browser platform we (the developers) get to choose which one we use.

ameen 2015-12-05 15:17 UTC link

I think theoretically Node.js could work without V8, and guess some of MS's work for IoT was indeed that (swapping V8 for Chakra).

Klathmon 2015-12-05 15:19 UTC link

I'm not sure where the hangup is, but I've found that Edge is fast as hell for initial page startup, but lags behind quite a lot when under heavy load.

I've seen the benchmarks but in my experience it just... lags...

For example, on the kangax ES6 compatibility table [1]. On chrome clicking a column takes less than a second, on Edge (i'm on an up-to-date Windows 10 machine, no preview stuff) it loads faster than in chrome, but takes 3+ seconds to switch between columns.

Even some of the stuff i've written acts similarly, and i can't figure out why.

[1]https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

jacquesm 2015-12-05 15:21 UTC link

Building a javascript engine is super simple. But to build one that has performance on par with the current crop will take you - as a single person - a lifetime and by then the state of the art will have moved on.

i_s 2015-12-05 15:21 UTC link

There is nothing in the language itself that allows multi-threading. Going forward, they are adding support in the language for the async keyword, similar to F#. Any way to achieve parallelism would have to be from APIs, e.g., like WebWorkers in the browser.

chrisseaton 2015-12-05 15:22 UTC link

These programs aren't magic. They use the same kind of constructs you use every day to write your programs. They use some different algorithms, but you can look those up in books and in existing engines. People who work on these engines started where you started and there's no reason you can't pick up all the skills over a few years.

devit 2015-12-05 15:23 UTC link

If you allow threads to share memory arbitrarily you need to add locking to all internal VM structures, which is going to be a significant slowdown.

Also it's not (any longer) considered good practice to have languages that allow mutable memory sharing since that makes software unreliable, so it's not really a good idea.

Without arbitrary memory sharing, multi-threading is already supported with web workers.

Klathmon 2015-12-05 15:29 UTC link

It's not as impossible as it sounds.

There are many JS engines which are extremely small compared to the big guys used in browsers. Most of them tend to grab a subset of the language and implement that.

For example, the creators of nginx created their own specialized engine called nginScript that runs JS for their stuff https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/nginScript/

There is even a javascript interpreter written in javascript which can be a good starting point to learn a bit how it works https://github.com/jterrace/js.js/

frik 2015-12-05 15:40 UTC link

I don't. A lot of code out in the wild already relies on v8, and won't work with Chkara. Node 5 is up-to-date with v8. Though, I would like to see Mozilla devsvwpuld revives the unofficial spidermonkey Node.js support (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2469786 , https://github.com/zpao/spidernode ).

whatever_dude 2015-12-05 15:43 UTC link

Yep. They're kicking everyone's asses in ES6 feature coverage. All the more impressive when you consider how they came from behind. http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

I's almost sad that Edge is not cross-platform.

whatever_dude 2015-12-05 15:47 UTC link

Initially I thought Edge would just be IE with (yet another) skin, but I have to say, it's absurdly fast and lightweight. It's still not my main browser as I'm now too deeply entrenched in Chrome for development, but it makes me really happy to know they're actually pushing the web ahead.

whatever_dude 2015-12-05 15:51 UTC link

The problem with JS engines nowadays isn't as much about the language itself (or its core library), it's more about the absurd amount of optimization it should have to perform well in a varied number of possible setups, and all while the browser is busy doing DOM compositing, loading yet more JS code, etc. Things like JIT are not exactly necessary if you just want your language to "run", but an important part of an optimized system.

To me it seems the past ~5 years of JS engine development have been focused on what kind of optimizations to implement, rather than parsing or implement core library features.

jameshart 2015-12-05 16:05 UTC link

In a world-ending scenario, 'having a working javascript engine' is likely to be surprisingly far down the list of priorities. I think we might actually need a new level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, just above 'self actualization', for 'lightweight scripting.'

justincormack 2015-12-05 16:09 UTC link

I believe MIT.

abchatra 2015-12-05 16:09 UTC link

I work for Chakra team and it is going to under MIT license.

pimpl 2015-12-05 16:13 UTC link

I had similar problems using Google Docs on Safari too, so I think it’s just a bug on Google’s side.

hackerboos 2015-12-05 16:17 UTC link

Not Node.js per se but a separate project that ran on the Chkara core and worked hard for cross-compatibility would be more than welcome.

thekodols 2015-12-05 16:19 UTC link

If it fails when they paste via right-click menu, it's actually a known issue/design decision on Drive's side. Try using shortcuts instead.

Manishearth 2015-12-05 16:19 UTC link

> Perhaps Servo+Chakra could be a thing?

Sounds like a lot of work (not to say it's not possible or interesting). Our bindings code[1] is pretty complicated already. It depends highly on how Chakra deals with things internally -- if it's similar to SpiderMonkey; I'd be interested in having a look. Might become a fun project :)

Without a reference open source DOM implementation (which we have for SM -- Firefox's DOM), we'd also need good docs for the Chakra API. No idea if that exists.

[1]: https://github.com/servo/servo/tree/master/components/script...

oblio 2015-12-05 16:40 UTC link

Well, historically, when Microsoft was still in competition-mode, Internet Explorer was kicking Netscape's ass with the later versions.

With the first few versions they were playing catch-up, but if I recall correctly, IE 4 and IE 5 actually had more features and better standards compliance than the current Netscape versions, as did IE 6 at its launch.

"IE hell" started once Microsoft won the race.

nojvek 2015-12-05 16:57 UTC link

I just want node running on chakra on my linux box. Given MS has a lot of money to make from Azure, I see this happening.

nojvek 2015-12-05 17:03 UTC link

Chakra started from a clean slate so they could think about problems differently and not be bogged down by v8 architecture.

spicyj 2015-12-05 17:04 UTC link

They've already built it, I think before V8 existed or around the same timeframe.

jandem 2015-12-05 17:08 UTC link

The next Firefox Nightly build should get 84% on that page, much closer to Edge than Firefox 44 (74%).

I work on SpiderMonkey and I'm super excited about this news. All JS engines have added more-or-less similar performance optimizations but often implemented differently and I'm really interested to see what the Chakra team did. I'd be happy to write a blog post on it next month, if people are interested.

Matthias247 2015-12-05 17:32 UTC link

The JVM implementations of Javascript (e.g. Nashorn) support multithreading. Imho it's not a good thing, because all existing Javascript code is written with singlethreading in mind and lots of stuff will break if you use it from multiple threads. Multithreaded code for Nashorn requires the use of JVM synchronization primitives, which are then not supported by other Javascript engines.

_wmd 2015-12-05 18:17 UTC link

Why build v8 when SpiderMonkey existed? Why build Chrome when Firefox existed? Ad infinitum

hakcermani 2015-12-05 18:53 UTC link

Totally, and with Typescript 1.7 they have also advanced the node.js game significantly with ES7 features.

zer0defex 2015-12-05 21:16 UTC link

Ditto - and I agree, underdog doesn't quite feel like the right word. It's more like yesterday's champion coming out of retirement to deliver some good old-fashioned ego checks on today's cocky up-and-comers. Either way, it's fun to watch.

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