On the other hand, for the first time in history, you have true "write once run everywhere". I can take my native C/C++ GL demos that normally run on the desktop, compile them to asm.js, distribute them via a simple URL, and users just click on a link and run the demo on every OS. No download and installation, no browser warnings about dangerous executables, no virus scanner scare popups. Compare this with iOS, where I need to be a certified Apple developer, need to sign my all my code, and can only distribute through the app store (and since it's only small graphics demos without real use, the gatekeepers would never let them through).

Sounds like the sandbox-escaping game is going to get pretty intense in the coming years.

I don't think it will be all that hard from a security standpoint. This means mostly fixing the major mess that has been security at the OS level and isn't changing any time soon.

We're not supposed to be giving any application all power they want. We just want to let them use the GPU and take inputs on focus, and if they misbehave we kill them. If they need anything else, they'll have to ask the user. It took Microsoft what, two decades? to realize this. And it's only sightly better now. The mobile OSes were the first to grasp this but it's still imperfect.

Java almost got there but I believe it lost traction because of UI, lack of clear leadership and being tied to a language.

We're going to have to go with browsers because although it's a big pile of hacks they are finally realizing the obvious (in hindsight) way we should develop most applications. I have no doubt it will continue to catch on.

The choice isn't between "support HTML/CSS/JS" and "don't support HTML/CSS/JS". No Web browser can drop backwards compatibility. We haven't even been able to get rid of backwards compatibility for much worse things than CSS, such as <center>, because sites you need to use (such as Hacker News) won't update their markup to use CSS for layout.

asm.js is attractive because it is a small extension to the Web platform, so the overall additional complexity of an HTML/CSS/JS engine (which we are likely never going to be able to drop) doesn't go up much by implementing asm.js optimizations.

Meanwhile, platforms that don't even try to wedge their technology into the HTML/CSS/JS universe have better applications.

We're talking about Web browsers. Technologies that try to integrate into Web browsers specifically but don't have a good compatibility story with the platform haven't had a lot of success.

Some examples of non-standard extensions which have fallen by the wayside (or failed outright):

    ActiveX
    Java Applets
    Flash
    Silverlight
    VBScript (and other non-JS scripting langs)
    NaCL
    Dart (via a native VM)

In some ways they do, but they are also nonstandard, with the downsides that that brings. Neither overall approach is perfect, it's good that we have a combination of both in our field.

Why get hung up on the fact that something is non-standard? Things don't just pop into existence as a standard way of doing things. Some core group of people has to agree on them and then away we go - we have a standard!

That's why everybody should actively use non-standard things that they want to become standards.

If you want to go native, then go native. If HTML/JS/CSS is a hack, then don't target the browser. It's that simple. Oh, you want to target the browser because it's ubiquitous? Well, that's because HTML/JS/CSS.

And on "emulating much better native platforms", well those native platforms are also trying (unsuccessfully) to emulate the web and the web is still winning.

While I fully support the development of alternatives to the web, I do not support that we should stop working on legacy technologies. Do you think people should have stopped working on gas lighting when electric lighting came along?

By native code do you mean assembly language? That would be very insecure and CPU-specific.

I think "Native to the underlying operating system" is what most people mean when they say native in this context.

Why does this sentiment always get downvoted? (Not just here on HN, but on other forums and in the real world as well)

Edit: to those downvoting me (classic), when I left this comment the parent was at -2 or -3 votes and at the bottom of the page.