I always have a problem with these kinds of frameworks. Every time I try to use one, and want to do something more in-depth for fancy than a lot of the functionality out-of-the-box, then I end up having to hunt down the way to extend X feature, and it often takes me more effort to do that then just writing in the root language would be.
That is to say: The abstraction isn't as expressive as the root language, and when I need something more expressive, then it's more troublesome than writing than the root language.
The rendering engine here does seem to perform admirably, and I have to congratulate them on that. Maybe I've just been burned a few too many times from this kind of language.
I have a real problem with an article that claims something about someone else that the other person themselves would openly refute. It's a classic straw man argument from the start... Assigning expectations and beliefs onto someone else and then deriding them for not holding up to the expectations they've placed on their target.
This is a fun little game. Starts out hard, until you start learning some of the rules. 1's are your friend, as well as large numbers. It'll get easier as you learn more patterns, but there are some that are a good challenge.
So... I'm conflicted about this. Sure, on one hand peer-to-peer streaming could solve some of the problems she's talking about, so long as there's a large enough audience for each video. Services like Steam have used P2P very effectively. At times it can break down to a very frustrating level quickly, so you'll still want CDNs around to act as seeds. It also doesn't work for live broadcasts which is becoming more common with the likes of Twitch. Also, the current technologies being discussed (marketed?) would require a plugin to work. I don't think this will fly until a browser-native solution is engineered.
On one hand the interface is interesting and novel, but I'm not sure it really has a lot to offer initially. It's much easier to visualize the relationships between pieces of data with how the linking works, but the individual dots are spread enough that it doesn't provide quite the context that it has the potential to provide.
I'm impressed that it works in Chrome on Linux with no additional plugins or craziness. Their interface is clumsy though, and could learn a lot about user interaction in 3d space from video games.
CPU backdoors are a very real concern, but not only in the CPU but in the growing complexity of the motherboard chipset. For example, a malicious memory controller could manipulate data on the way to the CPU, causing a faithful CPU to do malicious things.
For highly secured systems, this is of growing concern. With the amount of stuff made in China the supply chain is considered a considerable attack surface which has to be considered when sourcing electronics.
I think you underestimate the anger he's caused in the bureaucracy. Governments see him as a security threat, which means they'll spend military-level amounts to keep him under as much control as they can, and will justify that spending as a show of force against other would-be threats.
I'm not really sure changing the behavior of fundamental operations really counts as metaprogramming, but in many ways I think it's very in-line with some conceptual constructs JS already has in place. Considering that you can access an object's properties by addressing an array, the ability to call a function by accessing a property isn't very alien. Considering the flexibility of JS, I'd be curious to see how crazy you could get.
At the same time, I'm also very scared to see what kind of crazy code this will lead to that I'd have to look at. I think lots of people will probably implement overly complex or obtuse ideas because they are interesting.
Not super surprising. JS can be used for all kinds of stuff, and is hitting something of a critical mass. I expect there to be some JS fragmentation at some point, with more specific variants being used for different things (jQuery is one kind of example).
This is a common problem with a lot of these kinds of technologies... I've worked with the .NET entity framework, as well as spring .net. What people fail to really realize is that they are large, complex platforms which add a lot of "magic" to your system, and often make them harder to debug and maintain. Combined with the often steep learning curve, there is often very little practical development speed increase in the long run.
So there have been a lot of contenders to replace JavaScript, and it hasn't budged from it's market seat at all. Here's why:
You can do almost anything in JavaScript these days. The down side? You can do almost ~anything~ in JS these days. Including lots of stupid things.
Since JS works extremely well for user interaction, and is "good enough" for simple object-oriented programs, it will likely never go away in the foreseeable future in these realms. What I think things like SoundScript are for, is 1) for people who are used to strongly-typed programming languages to feel more comfortable on the web (which is actually pretty important), and 2) for larger OO or enterprise-style systems that really shouldn't have been written in JS in the first place (I'm looking at you Angular).
I wonder if it will end up like Go, though. An interesting language which never gets more than a niche market.
That is to say: The abstraction isn't as expressive as the root language, and when I need something more expressive, then it's more troublesome than writing than the root language.
The rendering engine here does seem to perform admirably, and I have to congratulate them on that. Maybe I've just been burned a few too many times from this kind of language.