Comment Re:"So who needs native code now?" (Score 1) 289
Umm, anyone who wants their code to not run substantially slower. Seriously, do you front end programmers really think nobody does numerical simulations or other performance-sensitive work? In my line of work, I'd kill for the opportunity to make my code 1.5 times faster!
I'm surprised by your answer at so many levels. First, I thought the guys doing scientific calculations were scientists that many times (not always of course) are only used to Matlab, Mathematica or even Excel. Second, obviously we will need native code, as well as interpreted, functional, and lots of code in domain specific areas (what the heck... I spent this Sunday morning writing in VimL, a language so stupid that can't copy a file without reading the whole contents in memory or invoking system(), but I needed to program in that and there is no way around it).
But the final sentence of the article isn't targeted at people doing heavy lifting. Is an "attack" at Google's Native Client (NaCl). I peeked at NaCl, and you needed a some set up and some APIs to run some native code invoked from the browser. ASM.js is way simpler, since is just a subset of JavaScript, and has much more possibilities of being followed by vendors like Opera or even Microsoft.
Oh, and, I do native code for a living, and while I would kill for making my code faster, my manager would kill for making me finish projects earlier.