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Google Earth API Will Be Retired On December 12, 2015
An anonymous reader writes Google [on Friday] announced it plans to retire the Google Earth API on December 12, 2015. The reason is simple: Both Chrome and Firefox are removing support for Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) plugins due to security reasons, so the API's death was inevitable. The timing makes sense. Last month, Google updated its plan for killing off NPAPI support in Chrome, saying that it would block all plugins by default in January and drop support completely in September. The company also revealed that the Google Earth plugin had dropped in usage from 9.1 percent of Chrome users in October 2013 to 0.1 percent in October 2014. Add dwindling cross-platform support (particularly on mobile devices), and we're frankly surprised the announcement didn't come sooner.
The first problem is, obviously, that asm.js is JavaScript. JavaScript is, by far, the worst mainstream programming language ever to have been created. It's riddled with unjustifiable flaws, from its very foundation to its very peak. I don't give a fuck if Brendan Eich only had a week to get it working, back in 1995. That was almost two decades ago. That's lots of time for these goddamn stupid problems to have been fixed many times over. Mozilla needs to get over their raging hardon for JavaScript. It's a bad language, and it needs to go.
It always kills me that he wanted to make Javascript approachable for novices. The irony is that you have to be a damn expert to avoid the nasty little pitfalls. He keeps thinking of new features, but seem to want to do nothing to get rid of some of the awful flaws. It kills me that the one thing that Brendan Eich did that I thought was decent--supporting the traditional definition of marriage--got him excoriated.
Summary:
1) I hate Javascript.
2) asm.js is bad because I say so.
3) I hate Mozilla.
Number of factual statements about asm.js or its problems: Zero.