Trans wrote:
> Anyone here use SpiderMonkey / OSSP js?  I wondering how that works out
> as a standard (not strictly web oriented) programming language and how
> it compares to using Ruby in that regard.

My company uses SpiderMonkey as the JS engine for the scripting
component of our 3D playback engine for the PC (and also Lua in another
branch of product). It's quite nice to be able to have JS objects that
map onto C++ objects, so that the methods you call are executed
full-speed.

For example, within our 3D world, we have vectors and 4x4
transformation matrices. Within JavaScript, you can do something like:

function onUpdate( )
{
   this.someVector.transform( parent.lastGlobalTransform )
   parent.rotation.lookAt( this.someVector )
}

And you get blazing fast matrix transforms, rotation adjustments, and
so on.

How does it compare to Ruby? In what sense? It's faster, for sure. As a
language, it's not nearly so nice as Ruby.. Although you can make
methods behave like properties using the __defineGetter__ and
__defineSetter__ methods, these are last on the lookup chain and
dreadfully slow to use.

Did you have specific areas you're wondering about a comparison?