Subj : JS Doors for Synchro
To   : art
From : Nightfox
Date : Tue Dec 15 2009 13:38:00

  Re: JS Doors for Synchro
  By: art to All on Tue Dec 15 2009 19:10:56

 >  > This has the restriction of relying on the Synchro JSOM and therefore
 >  > unportable to other BBS platforms. Another downside is uncompiled source 
 >  > for all to see--not a problem in this case as I don't mind open sourcing 
 >  > 
 >  > Apart from these restrictions, what are the downsides to this approach?

Well, JavaScript does have the upside that you don't need to re-compile it for
the multitude of different systems that are available.  A JavaScript door will
run wherever Synchronet runs, whether that be Windows, Linux, BSD, etc..  But
the fact that it relises on the Synchronet JSOM is a significant downside.

Another downside for some doors is speed - If you're writing something that
needs to be very fast, JS isn't always the best languge.  Not too long ago, I
wrote a Synchronet JS door that can solve Sudoku puzzles, but I noticed that
it's noticebly slower than a compiled C++ version using the same algorithm. 
Furthermore, for the algorithm I used (a brute force solving algorithm I found
on Wikipedia), there are worst-case Sudoku puzzles that it takes much more time
to solve; for the JavaScript version, the JS engine arbitraily terminated the
script once it had reached some high number of iterations - The JS engine
(falsely) assumed it was in an infinite loop and thus terminated the script. 
So, for some things, JS might not be the best language.

Nightfox

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