No language lasts forever (especially not one that evolves as slowly as Javascript does), and tying the web to JavaScript and JavaScript only very obviously dooms the web. Not this year or three years from now, but eventually.

That nobody other than Google is making long-view plans for the future in this regard is somewhat insane.

And I'm not saying this because I think it's the best ever, or because I don't learn from history and how things change.

It's the nature of the web. We're still dragging things from HTTP/0.9 and and from HTML 1.0 along.

But also, JS is a capable script engine with millions of USD put into engineering VMs into it, and the networks effects are inescapable. I don't see WASM replacing it either. They'll be used in tandem.

It's a monster language with maximum bureaucracy, but it's not going anywhere, since most large companies already have legacy systems built with Java.

But I also am not a fan of this direction just like you. My personal thought is, JS will never lose its dominance just like Java, and it will grow and grow until it becomes a monster like the Java ecosystem, and it will become shittier and shittier.

But that is only until something disruptive comes along that will decimate the influence of the desktop web browsing experience as we know it.

I think the core proposal is that Javascript stays the defacto language of the web, but you build a standardized IL that all browsers target. Of course Javascript would be one of the core languages that would guide the design of the IL, because you don't want this new IL and Javascript to incompatible.

The nice thing though is after you do that, other people can write new languages that target that IL, and they're not second-class citizens. It allows there to be real language innovation on the IL, just as there is language innovation on x86.

The problem today is that JS is not a great language to target, and it relegates anything that targets it to second-class status (why are you using XYZ, why not just use Javascript?).

I think its a great idea. IMO, this would be a far more important development than HTML5 for the life of the web.

Sometimes I feel that with Javascript, we developers have taken something that wasn't ours, and we're in the process of destroying the best thing there ever was about it.

One of its best qualities used to be that you could have absolutely no idea what you're doing, read a few bad tutorials somewhere on the web, mash your head onto the keyboard and end up with something horrifying that was nevertheless close to what you wanted to achieve. It was beautiful, egalitarian. Like the web is supposed to be.

I've spent quite a bit of time on Stackoverflow, coaching people who you would not call developers (nor would they themselves) on how to do that one tiny thing they wanted to add to the site for their bakery, yoga studio or blog. And almost got it working themselves. I know of no other language that can tell a similar success story, with that high an impact.

Just insert that <script> for that jQuery plugin here and modify that initializer over there with a vague understand of how it needs to be adapted to your situation. Voilà!

But we couldn't let that stand, could we? Because what works for Alice and Bob doesn't work for somebody writing that 200.000 line image editor or CRM in JS, and let's face it, that's what the web is about.

So here we are, the single <script> tag having been replaced with compilers, transpilers, five mutually incompatible build systems, three different module systems in God knows how many implementations, frameworks changing their API every ten minutes and five thousand lines of NPM module code to be installed for even the simplest of tasks.

We did it, gals and guys! The web is safely back in the hands of full-time professionals (with Hindu cow-like frustration tolerance). Where it belongs.

Bah.

Sure, we could add a new language, but with various competing implementations we will probably get at least the same amount of interoperability problems as we have had with JavaScript.

And because of backwards compatibility browsers will still have to support JavaScript indefinitely in addition to the new language.

If something else comes along, gains a lot of traction, and develops its own ecosystem then javascript could conceivably eventually just fade into the background. But that's going to take time.

I have no issue with javascript fading away over time, that's just not what's happening right now.

I hope that we'll come around to the idea that this two-decades long fascination with abusing the hell out of web technology was a fever dream, and go on to build something better on more substantial foundations.

I'm probably going to be disappointed...

HTML was meant to describe text, now it describes regions of the screen to be repainted as well as the "content" to be repainted.

CSS was meant to add simple effects like bold, italic and simple newspaper-like positioning (float this image left). It's been repurposed to describe visual rendering and even animations.

JavaScript was meant to add some scriptability to the DOM, and now it's morphed into a full-fledged programming language.

So the state of the web is a depressing mishmash of old, repurposed technologies.

It would be nice if there were a programming language that "knew" about the web. It would realize that the programming effort would be shared between two computers, client and server, and would have appropriate security and other conveniences baked in. For example, you should only have to describe your business logic once (as opposed to once on the server and once on the client). Also, this programming language should no longer be tied to the anachronistic concept of rendering a "document" with "styles".

But alas, it's very hard to simply go into an academic tower and design a language and release it into the wild and expect it to catch on. These things tend to grow organically and incrementally. So whatever next step there is has to embrace where we currently are. This is why you see not merely new client-side languages, but new languages that compile to JavaScript. If they didn't compile to JavaScript, how could they ever be used?