Re:Out of bounds memory access in V8 in Google Chrome prior ...
by josephg on Wednesday January 24, 2024 @05:34PM
(#39123514)
> As I recall, they were actually written in Java and translated to JavaScript (by GWT) in part because of how limited JS was as a platform at the time.
GWT - at least the opensource version - came a few years after Gmail launched. I’m pretty sure gmail and other Google products of that era were written using the Google Closure compiler. Not GWT. (Not to be confused with closure the language).
The closure compiler was written in Java, but it was a JS-to-JS compiler similar to a js bundler, minifier and the typescript compiler all rolled into one. Its input was (is) a semi-typed JavaScript dialect where types were put in special comments. It has a lot of code analysis & optimisation tricks that I think still aren’t present anywhere else in the JavaScript ecosystem. And it came with a batteries-included standard library that was really needed at the time, to both pave over browser differences and provide a lot of missing functionality. (Js was a scrapyard back then).
I’m surprised the closure compiler never saw much use outside of Google. It was a lovely piece of software for its time. It’s opensource - but nobody seems to know about it.
GWT - at least the opensource version - came a few years after Gmail launched. I’m pretty sure gmail and other Google products of that era were written using the Google Closure compiler. Not GWT. (Not to be confused with closure the language).
The closure compiler was written in Java, but it was a JS-to-JS compiler similar to a js bundler, minifier and the typescript compiler all rolled into one. Its input was (is) a semi-typed JavaScript dialect where types were put in special comments. It has a lot of code analysis & optimisation tricks that I think still aren’t present anywhere else in the JavaScript ecosystem. And it came with a batteries-included standard library that was really needed at the time, to both pave over browser differences and provide a lot of missing functionality. (Js was a scrapyard back then).
I’m surprised the closure compiler never saw much use outside of Google. It was a lovely piece of software for its time. It’s opensource - but nobody seems to know about it.