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Extensions in GNOME 45 - New import system is not backwards compatible
(blogs.gnome.org)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Um, you're like more than a decade too late to ask this question. Javascript is pretty much everywhere now, whether you like it or not.
For the record, I dislike it as well - not the language itself mind you, but the fact that they're using it to make bloated desktop apps and desktop UX. Long gone are the days when devs cared about performance, sometimes going as far as writing code in ASM to get the most out of paltry hardware.
Nowadays, even a $25 computer like the Raspberry Pi has enough computing resources to run bloated JS apps, so no one really cares any more, except for old fogies like us who grew up using entire operating systems that fit on a single floppy disk.
I like to tell people Chris Sawyer wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 by himself entirely in ASM. Still amazing games in 2023
Equally (or more?) impressive is the procedurally generated 3D FPS .kkrieger, which weighed a paltry 96KB. 96KB in 2004 was quite impressive, considering that Doom, released a decade prior, was 2.39 MB, and even the original Wolfenstein 3D, released in '92, was 1MB.
JavaScript itself is not particularly bloated. It is smaller than Python and fast as luajit. Probably the best scripting choice.
If you want to write a modern shell in assembly have fun.
I never claimed that Javascript itself was bloated - it's about using the right tool for the right job. The bloat comes from using awful frameworks like Electron to create fake "native" apps, and then fooling users into thinking they're getting a native app, wasting tons CPU resources and sysadmin time trying to fix these bloody Electron apps into shape (speaking as a DevOps guy).
Also, there's a world of options to chose from for shell programming that strike a better balance between performance and practicality, in the spectrum between ASM and JS. Oh, and writing a modern shell in ASM is most definitely fun, you should give it a try sometime. ASM shells - actually, entire operating exists already, if you aren't aware of it. You really should check out MenuetOS or KolibriOS sometime. Sure, it's nothing more than a hobby project, but it's quite fun to take it for a spin, and experience a preview of how fast and effecient operating systems could be.
You could still get a basic Linux system on a floppy if you really wanted to.
Yeah, but not a full-fledged GUI OS with all your basic GUI tools, including a GUI web browser. QNX had a floppy version back that that fit everything - even a bunch of games - on a single 1.44MB floppy.
In saying that, there are modern GUI OSes which you can fit on a floppy, such as MenuetOS and KolibriOS. And because they're coded fully in assembly, it can actually fit and do a lot more that what QNX-floppy could do back then, which is very impressive for modern code.