<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; "><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; "><div><div>I am following UrWeb (silently) since months (if not years), and I find it really interesting.</div>
<div>But today I would give it no credit in its current incarnation, because I think it lacks some important factors to succeed. (mainly with a social dimension).</div></div><div><br></div><div>Indeed, for a language/framework to break throught, it needs to get momentum with a big/growing community and to play with current/hypped technologies, take advantage of working with existing librairies and getting a decent tooling.</div>
<div>The latters are not easy for a such radical technology as UrWeb but that's a reality, disregarded how beautiful and well crafted it is.</div><div><br></div><div>I think that its current backend and the fact it has no way to integrate existing stuff easily are two show stoppers for urweb (a FFI via C only does not target the right community).</div>
<div><br></div><div>When I think about it, I immediatly see a JS backend. Just being able to integrate this community and run on NodeJS for instance or take advantage of existing JS APIs and Tools.</div><div><br></div><div>
This is not the case today.</div><div>I was wondering what others are thinking about it strategically?</div><div><br></div><div>Would a JS backend be hard to integrate with the current compiler which is already targetting the JS frontend?.</div>
<div>I see a lot more issues with the integration of existing JS code (APIs) .. here a good example would perhaps be to simply trust explicitely (ala HaXe).</div><div><br></div><div>Another question: are there other reasons than timing not to have targeted a LLVM backend instead of the current one?</div>
<div><br></div><div>I don't want to hurt anyone nor to denigrate, I really appreciate the technology behind urweb, I am impressed and think that it goes the right way.</div><div>So naturally I don't want to see it disappearing.</div>
<div>Take this as the expression of a critical mind and, beforeall, a positive feedback.</div></span><br><font color="#888888"><div>Stephane Le Dorze</div></font></span>