The Netscape Inquisition
Alice, excitedly twitching about the big reveal, drops her laptop down in front of Bob, who then stares agape at her new application, open in the many panels of her IDE.
Utterly flummoxed, Bob attempts to speak with several unsuccessful attempts. Rallying his forces, he finally stutters, “Th-th-this … this isn’t whatsit! You said, you said … it was … JavaScript! What the hell am I …”
“It compiles to JavaScript!” she proclaimed triumphantly. “You were complaining only yesterday that JavaScript should just be considered ‘a machine-readable language’ and we should all write ‘something else that compiles to it.’”
“But …”
“But what!?”
“Well … I just didn’t … See, I just didn’t expect so many bleeding s-expressions!”
DRAMATIC CHORD PLAYS.
The door bursts open. Three figures in red robes sweep into the room, bearing between them a laptop, a terminal emulator, and an almost fanatical devotion to prefix notation.
“NOBODY,” announces Cardinal Naggum, “expects the Browser S-expression!”
He pauses for effect, which is somewhat undermined by the laptop emitting a cheerful startup chime.
“Our chief weapon is parentheses. Parentheses and prefix notation. Our two chief weapons are parentheses and prefix notation. And an almost fanatical devotion to clean compiled output.” He frowns. “Our three weapons are parentheses, prefix notation, clean compiled output, and a Deno runtime — wait, I’ll come in again.”
The door closes. The door reopens.
“NOBODY expects the Browser S-expression! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as parentheses, prefix notation, clean compiled output, a Deno runtime, and — wait.”
Cardinal Klabnik leans over. “You forgot the Rust formatter.”
“Right! Parentheses, prefix notation, clean compiled output, a Deno runtime, a Rust formatter, and a nice shim for–” voice rising, hanging by a thread of intense drama, then explosively and an octave or two higher “THE BROWSER!!!” Pausing, he counts on his fingers. Runs out of fingers. Starts over. “The point is, it’s very easy to install.”
Cardinal Friedman clears his throat. “Three commands, Your Eminence.”
“THREE commands! Show them… the three commands.”