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A comment on Show HN: Cannoli – A compiler for a subset of Python written in Rust. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Cannoli – A compiler for a subset of Python writ... by pcwalton on Friday May 18, 2018 @10:15AM (#17101633)
> So eventually, people (Google first) pourred a load of money to it until it became usable, and they had a cleaner leadership.

Google was not the first company to pour lots of money into JavaScript. Remember the first browser war?

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Re:Show HN: Cannoli – A compiler for a subset of Python writ... by sametmax on Friday May 18, 2018 @10:32AM (#17101753)
Yes, and JS was not the center of it at all. Support was inconsistent, it was slow, leaked memory...

Actually, most actors tried to find a way to replace JS with something in house (ActionScript, ActiveX, Java applets) so they could dominate the market.

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Re:Show HN: Cannoli – A compiler for a subset of Python writ... by pcwalton on Friday May 18, 2018 @10:36AM (#17101783)
Most scripting languages were slow at that point, and memory leaks are still rampant in popular browser engines. Microsoft had an enormous team working on "JScript". I wouldn't be surprised if the size of that team significantly exceeded the size of the V8 team in the early days.

Netscape and later Mozilla were also heavily investing in JavaScript long before Google came on the scene.

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