WebIL - the future Assembly language for the Web?

Some people have expressed their opinion of JavaScript being the Assembly language for the web. I actually partially agree with the statement. It is far from being close to the Assembly language neither syntactically nor functionally, but "Javascript is as low-level as a web programming language goes."

Despite the fact that especially in last few years it became much more developer-friendly (thank you John Resig for the wonderful jQuery library!) and faster with the improved browser engines, it still has many flaws (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JavaScriptFlaws). Just to name a few:

• Dynamically-typed variables often cause run-time errors
• Language syntax and implementation of many data types (e.g. arrays, date/time, numeric types) often do not follow most common programming language conventions (C-like languages like C/C++, C#, Java)
• Very limited number of built-in functions. There is no common framework that is supported by all browsers. In most cases, you need to download external libraries or create your own to implement commonly-used functionality.
• Browsers may interpret the same script differently. It is necessarily caused by non-conformance to ECMA specification, but by different ways of manipulating the DOM.
• No ways or, rather awkward ways to manage performance, memory utilization and garbage collection
• No easy ways to log and report scripting errors
• No easy ways to ensure source code protection, code trust and security
• JavaScript is not a true object-oriented programming language. People that can script JavaScript classes are often considered JavaScript gurus :-)

So, how can we solve it? My idea is to implement a browser engine that would execute WebIL - Web Intermediate Language, just like C# or VB.Net code is first compiled into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) and then compiled into OS-specific code at run-time (JIT - Just In-Time compiling). Here are a few advantages of this concept:

• The WebIL is not language-agnostic. The code can be written in JavaScript, C#, Java,VB, F#, Python, Ruby, UNI (yoU Name It :-)), and then compiled into the WebIL by a compiler/interpretor. So, the existing JavaScript libraries can be relatively easily converted into the WebIL libraries.
• No need to maintain client and server code bases. A common library can be compiled into platform-specific code and WebIL with very little or no modifications.
• The WebIL should be standardized and should not be browser-agnostic. The same WebIL code should execute identically in any Browser, whether it is runs on a desktop or a mobile device.
• Core libraries (frameworks) can be delivered with the browsers with updates and extensions hosted in centralized locations and cached by the Browser.
• WebIL libraries can be potentially even smaller than the current JavaScript libraries because core frameworks will implement most common functionality.
• Common coding and design patterns now can be implemented in WebIL.
• Developer productivity can potentially increase significantly. Learning and transition for programmers and web developers is going to be easier.
• Solutions can be coded more efficiently.

ECMA published CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) specification ECMA-335 rev 5 in December of 2010 (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm). Even though it is most likely the specification for .Net 5.0, I do not see a reason why its sub-set cannot be used for the WebIL. In fact, in version 4 of the Framework Microsoft already created Client profiles.

So, I am wondering, is Microsoft already working on something that is similar to the WebIL concept? They have the power to revolutionize the web.