Thanks to the internet, everyone today has the ability to communicate, present, and connect through the incredible tools that technology provides. This is made possible by programming languages that browsers can interpret. In this sense, the browser acts like a brain—it transforms written code into something our human brains can understand.
As shown in the table below, there are various languages that this “brain” can interpret. But these capabilities evolve over time. For example, Adobe Flash was gradually phased out due to several reasons—most notably, serious security vulnerabilities. In response, the Chromium Project published a Flash Roadmap in 2016, which was updated over time. It served as a technical guide for the gradual disabling of Flash in the Chrome browser.
| Language | Runs in Browser | Needs Compilation | Notes / Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| HTML | ✅ | ❌ | Page structure and content |
| CSS | ✅ | ❌ | Styling and layout |
| JavaScript | ✅ | ❌ | Interactivity, logic, DOM manipulation |
| WebAssembly | ✅ | ✅ | High-performance binary format |
| TypeScript | 👨🔧 | ✅ | Typed superset of JavaScript |
| Dart | 👨🔧 | ✅ | Used in Flutter Web |
| Elm | 👨🔧 | ✅ | Functional language for web apps |
| CoffeeScript | 👨🔧 | ✅ | Simplified JavaScript syntax |
| ClojureScript | 👨🔧 | ✅ | Lisp-style functional programming |
| Rust | 👨🔧 | ✅ | Safe and fast systems programming |
| PHP | ❌ | ❌ | Server-side only |
| Java | ❌ | ❌ | Applets deprecated, no longer supported |
| ActionScript | ❌ | ❌ | Deprecated with Adobe Flash |
It’s important to recognize that the browser—as the interpreter—is shaped by public decisions. These decisions help ensure secure and reliable use of websites and applications.
We tend to favor languages when we have a clear image of them: easy to use, pleasant to work with, and simple to adopt. Their underlying principles are well-documented and accessible. When that’s not the case, we often switch to more modern environments.
And What About AI?
Today, the question arises: Which kind of language does artificial intelligence prefer? One that humans can easily understand and use—or one that only AI can process and comprehend? This is what AI answered to me:
🤝 AI is built to serve human understanding
AI overwhelmingly prefers language that humans can easily perceive and perform—and here’s why:
- Purpose-driven design: AI systems are created to assist, communicate, and collaborate with humans. That means using language that’s clear, intuitive, and actionable for people.
- Human-centric training: Most AI models are trained on human-generated data—books, articles, conversations—so they naturally learn patterns that are familiar and accessible to humans.
Interestingly, AI adapts to us, the users. Much like German television offers the “Tagesschau in einfacher Sprache” (News in simplified language), AI strives to present information in a way that’s easy for us to grasp. It’s about adapting to our functionality—not the other way around.
This is a solution for:
Us/We
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