Re:Node.js and the new web front-end
by dragonwriter on Tuesday October 08, 2013 @12:29PM
(#6516031)
> Nobody developed a language to run on top of Java, C#, C++
Because instead of developing languages to run on top of them, people just designed languages to run on the same platform. The browser environment is a special case where the only common feature of the platform that is available to target is JS, there's no common VM underlying it, so replacements target JS.
Though its worth noting that while it may be true that no one developed a language to run on top of C++, C++ was originally implemented as a language that was preprocessed into C and then fed to a C compiler, much the way that many JS alternatives are compiled to JS and then fed to a JS interpreter.
Because instead of developing languages to run on top of them, people just designed languages to run on the same platform. The browser environment is a special case where the only common feature of the platform that is available to target is JS, there's no common VM underlying it, so replacements target JS.
Though its worth noting that while it may be true that no one developed a language to run on top of C++, C++ was originally implemented as a language that was preprocessed into C and then fed to a C compiler, much the way that many JS alternatives are compiled to JS and then fed to a JS interpreter.