There are a lot of potential reasons to use something like this, but having a main selling point of it being "lightweight" is just flat out lying.
What has lying got to do with a subjective definition of "lightweight". See discussion on Javascript - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39797181/why-javascript-...
What does "lightweight" really mean?
The idea that everyone sees "lightweight" and they ONLY think of Chromium size seems an ascription of "lightweight" ONLY to chromium size. I understand that has been a more common approach to chromium based solutions. This is not it here.
I have said in a few of my comments that this is simple referring to "simpler".
See a definition of "lightweight" from wikipedia:
A lightweight programming language is one that is designed to have very small memory footprint, is easy to implement (important when porting a language), and/or has minimalist syntax and features.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_programming_langua...
So if we replace "lightweight programming language" with Chromely, while the small memory footprint, may be arguable false, it is however easier to implememt and minimal features. Note the "and/or" part.
Corrected:
There are a lot of potential reasons to use something like this, but having a main selling point of it being "lightweight" is just flat out lying or willfully misunderstanding what lightweight means.
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Javascript, and all scripting languages in general (maybe excepting lua and similar) are fundamentally not lightweight. They require enormously complex runtimes.
I'd say a reasonable definition of "lightweight" for an application runtime is if a complete, distributable app including all the required components can fit in 1 MB (This functionally excludes things like .NET too).
There are, or course, odd corner cases (using the OS UI components, etc...), but it's broadly applicable.
Other relevant bits to being lightweight - how fast is the application to start/stop? What's the minimum runtime overhead? etc...
> Other relevant bits to being lightweight - how fast is the application to start/stop? What's the minimum runtime overhead? etc...
I have not had the bandwidth to check this. My hunch is Chromely may have some edge on this. But we leave that until it is proven or not.
> There are a lot of potential reasons to use something like this ..
I thought so too, so have many developers, thanks for pointing this out.
Appreciate the feedbacks! Thanks.