Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#11

Post by v_lisivka » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #4

I believe that's why Web Assembly ( https://webassembly.org/ ) has been created. Eventually we will be able to use any language that can compile to Wasm.

Right now we can use any language which can be compiled to JavaScript. What will change? Wasm is not faster than JS.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#12

Post by jcadam » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

> I don't see what problems it solves.

It solves the problem of forcing a medium that was originally intended for documents and presenting information(the www) to support rich, interactive applications.

The whole html/css/js thing is a giant, ugly kludge, but it's what we're stuck with.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#13

Post by khedoros1 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

It solves the problem of "browsers need some form of embedded programming language". From there, it makes some degree of sense to also use it in the backend, to avoid multiple programming languages in the same codebase.

On the other hand, I've never written anything in Javascript. Maybe I'd have a lower opinion of it if my stack made heavy use of it.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#14

Post by harel » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

No. Quite awake actually. JavaScript opens up a world of possibilities you cannot do with just HTML. It's the current platform of the browser app. If you are happy with static websites, that's great. Most people are not.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#15

Post by Grazester » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

I feel the same way(js is fine for tying together a wbepage however).

I am now rewriting a startup's entire platform from PHP to js for no good reason. They claim they can't find any decent PHP developers and that js developers are easier to come by, yet here I am a PHP developer that has never wrote js outside the browser doing their js work?? Makes no sense.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#16

Post by holografix » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

Grazester wrote: post #15

I feel the same way(js is fine for tying together a wbepage however). I am now rewriting a startup's entire platform from PHP to js for no good reason. They claim they can't find any decent PHP developers and that js developers are easier to come by, yet here I am a PHP developer that has never wrote js outside the browser doing their js work?? Makes no sense.

Time to re-skill?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#17

Post by tathougies » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

harel wrote: post #14

No. Quite awake actually. JavaScript opens up a world of possibilities you cannot do with just HTML. It's the current platform of the browser app. If you are happy with static websites, that's great. Most people are not.

I mean... you could replace javascript with any other programming language and achieve the same thing. The choice of javascript as the language with which to access the standardized APIs is arbitrary. Browsers could have equivalently chosen any other sufficiently similar language, like Lua or Python.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#18

Post by simion314 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

My problem is not as much with the language but with the entire platform, I would like the DOM to evolve too, so far only the language was updated.

As a small example I would like to have a built-in dropdown/select that I can css it to my needs then to create my own using nested divs or use one made by others that may have corner cases or is not efficient.

I would also like some standard ways to show a modal, basically more standard APIs to be added to address the most needed things.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#19

Post by tathougies » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

v_lisivka wrote: post #11

transfire wrote: post #4

I believe that's why Web Assembly ( https://webassembly.org/ ) has been created. Eventually we will be able to use any language that can compile to Wasm.

Right now we can use any language which can be compiled to JavaScript. What will change? Wasm is not faster than JS.

For one thing, web assembly's architecture more closely matches the traditional backends that language designers are familiar with. Compiling to code to a byte code is a pretty much solved problem, and we have compilers that do this. Finally, while web assembly may not be faster than JS (although that really remains to be seen), it is faster to load.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just tired of JavaScript?

#20

Post by pier25 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

To be fair, the language is in better shape today than it has ever been. The ecosystem, that is another matter.

Personally I'd love to completely ditch JavaScript. I'm eagerly following the progress of WebAssembly. I'm certain in 5 to 10 years the majority of front end dev will not be done in JavaScript.