JavaScript crazy talk!
Mike Dierken pointed yesterday to this 1998 article by Greg Travis where Travis proposed that we look JavaScript at in a different way to how it was popularly used at the time, and argued that JavaScript had the potential to provide a more responsive experience over the web:
"In particular, we are going to forget the assumption that a Web page is loaded directly from a Web server. Instead, we are going to use the request/response structure of the Web in a slightly different way. We are going to have the server script send the browser a page that is nothing but JavaScript code. This code, when executed, will stuff new information into data structures which can be used and displayed by the rest of the program. That is, the purpose of the server call is to simply to get raw data from the server."
Crazy talk? No, no, this is crazy:
"Admittedly, this is an unusual use of JavaScript. But all we have done is to treat JavaScript like the thing it is -- a fully functional programming language. If JavaScript doesn't have what you need -- threading, or remote procedure calls, for example -- you can always create it yourself."