For a couple of years now, JavaScript has been encroaching into territory traditionally held by Flash.
At the BBC’s TVMP department, news of set top boxes making the switch to JavaScript seems to be an almost daily occurrence as manufacturers fall over themselves to jump onto the JavaScript bandwagon for alleged “faster development” and the mythical “build once, deploy everywhere” utopian ideal.
I’ve witnessed the repetition of such claims myself. “We’ll be switching this product to JavaScript in the near future because – obviously – it’s faster” a product owner once said, followed by the nodding heads and murmurs of agreement of other non-developers.
The reality for those of us who have not succumbed to the merry tune of the JavaScript Pied Piper’s flute is that “build once, deploy everywhere” is nonsense as far as JavaScript is concerned and the platform simply isn’t mature enough to competently support apps like this without extensive – and in terms of time, expensive – hacks and workarounds.
Time is being spent filling the gaps of missing libraries and frameworks by converting codebases from other languages – including Flash.
The Flash version of the Sports app that delivered the Olympics last year was released in time for the F1 season in March, while the JavaScript version missed that deadline and was instead launched for Euro 2012 a few weeks later. A few weeks is no big deal of course, except that the JavaScript version was started four months before the Flash version in the summer of 2011.
True, the JavaScript version targeted more devices: a half dozen TVs compared to the Flash version’s single target platform of TiVo. But using the number of target devices as a reason for delay is contrary to the “build once, deploy everywhere” mantra.
Ironically, it’s the Flash version that lives up to the claim because although it was developed solely with the TiVo in mind, it runs perfectly without modification on a number of other devices including Western Digital and Popcorn set top boxes.
The Events app on which I was lead developer was developed from scratch in Flash in less than four months. It exceeded expectations by achieving not only the MVP (minimum viable product) but a few stretch goals as well, and even had a week to spare at the end. A JavaScript version wasn’t even attempted because in a somewhat surreal situation, the same management who echo-chamber to each other that JavaScript development is faster and easier were also in agreement that there wasn’t enough time to build a JavaScript version.
The first few converted devices have started to make their way into the office and are now running JavaScript versions of the Flash apps they once ran. Performance on the new JavaScript versions is poor, with product owners even electing to disable animation in an attempt to maintain an acceptable level of responsiveness. All this hard work in switching platforms so that we can deliver exactly the same features but with a fraction of the performance… 😬