Google: Please Save Web Developers

How a new suite of unencumbered technologies could elevate web development today and better prepare us for HTML5 tomorrow

The web development world is in an interesting place. HTML5 is the future, but its not quite ready. Javascript is the lingua franca of this brave new world despite the fact it lacks many basic features of modern OO languages and was never intended to be used for sophisticated desktop-like apps (think Google Apps.) Apple has accelerated the move away from plugin based RIA technologies such as Flash/Flex. In the iOS world that is increasingly dominating high end mobile apps you have two options - mobile web apps using a subset of HTML5 or native apps written with an antiquated language. The future of Java, the language of Android and millions of lines of server-side code, seems uncertain as a litigious Oracle increasingly looks like a suboptimal steward and pillars of the JCP such as Apache walk away. The only company with a high performance modern VM, solid standard library and support of modern OO and functional languages in the browser is...roll the drums...Microsoft!

Google - This is the perfect time for you to save the web from an icky future. What we need is a new standard, lets call it Plex, that provides a standard abstraction facilitating the use of multiple modern languages (OO, functional, etc.) with a standard library on everything from the cloud to the desktop to the phone. This may sound a lot like Java or .NET but a universal VM approach isn't possible, at least not at first, because these apps need to run on the server _and_ in the browser without the benefit of a plugin. On the client we need a GWT-like abstraction layer that, in the short term, cross compiles any Plex compliant language to HTML5 and Javascript - basically a GWT compiler with GCC-style pluggable front ends (i.e. languages.) Simultaneously a push should be started to incorporate an efficient intermediate language in the HTML5 specification so the Javascript step in the Plex compilation pipeline can be removed.

Plex should be designed to accommodate popular languages (Ruby, Python, etc.) in the future but out of the gate it should introduce a flagship language optimized for the Plex environment. "G" should be an optionally typed language supporting OO and functional models with all the goodies we've come to expect. It takes a lot of resources to write a new language, a new server and mobile VM, a new cross compiler for HTML5 and all the quality tools necessary to support development, but if anyone can do it, it's you. I bet your friends at the ASF and other former JCP members would be willing to help.