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JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

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Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#91

Post by pcwalton »

aikah wrote: post #16
onion2k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poorly written websites can bring a desktop PC to its knees, but so can a poorly written native application. That isn't an argument against leveraging web technology so much as an argument in favour of well written applications. And at least with a chromeless-browser-pretending-to-be-application you have the protection of the browser process sandbox so an app that goes awry isn't going to take your computer down that…

> That isn't an argument against leveraging web technology so much as an argument in favour of well written applications The difference is there is very little room for optimisation in most javascript runtimes. They don't support multi-threading and the memory is impossible to manage. "Lower" level languages always allow better performance tweaking when necessary. Javascript allows next to none. You can't tell javasc…

> They don't support multi-threading

Yes, they do, via Web Workers. They just don't support multithreading at the level of concurrent access to the DOM, and they don't support shared memory. Very few native libraries support concurrent access to UI widgets, and not many native applications make heavy use of shared memory for compute either. (Most native applications don't have heavy compute needs in the first place…)

> Give me an array of 10 elements

new Array(10)?

> give me a integer of that length

Uint8Array, Uint16Array, Uint32Array?

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#92

Post by abc_lisper »

Ahem. Let me be the first to say, YUCK!!!

I don't understand why people like this language. I am sure it has it's uses etc., but come on, if you want to build a reliable, easy-to-reason program, using JS is just running up a escalator that is going down.

https://abdulapopoola.com/2015/09/30/why-javascript-seems-to...

http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/js/

http://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

http://blog.chewxy.com/2014/01/27/javascript-wat-again/

I can see using js as a target language with a 'transpiler', but JS is just a shitty language to write code.

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#93

Post by mattvot »

simula67 wrote: post #62

> It turns out it’s useful to have a lingua franca for the web. No, I don't think so. Most people do not use JavaScript since it is useful. They use it since it is the only option available on the browser. There is a BIG difference. > Creating desktop apps in JavaScript lets developers choose from a vast range of freely available code libraries and frameworks, which takes much of the grunt work out of coding Lots of…

simula67, are you aware that the website (http://jojiantony.xyz) in your profile goes to an Apple phishing website?

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#94

Post by Udik »

kartan wrote: post #54
niftich wrote: post #40

The salient points of the article: - People are stuffing websites into Electron and packaging it as a native application - HTML/CSS/JS is considered 'hackable' because it's widely understood by today's semi-power-user audience Although the article doesn't say it, this seems to imply that: - Full-native development unique on each platform is considered too much effort, when you can get a cross-platform app with Electr…

> HTML/CSS/JS is considered 'hackable' because it's widely understood by today's semi-power-user audience I think that's related to the high fault-tolerance in Javascript. A good developer is good in any language, so she can work with Javascript. A beginner or even a bad developer can make things happen in Javascript, when that is not always possible in other languages. So the entry point level is so low that a lot o…

I can assure you that a bad developer can make things happen in any language. And it will look and behave like shit in all of them. There is no language that makes a developer write good code by magic.

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#95

Post by fzzzy »

pcwalton wrote: post #81
simula67 wrote: post #62

> It turns out it’s useful to have a lingua franca for the web. No, I don't think so. Most people do not use JavaScript since it is useful. They use it since it is the only option available on the browser. There is a BIG difference. > Creating desktop apps in JavaScript lets developers choose from a vast range of freely available code libraries and frameworks, which takes much of the grunt work out of coding Lots of…

> Let's just call this experiment a failure The problem with "just calling this experiment a failure"—why that won't work in practice—is that JavaScript is not a failure. It's extremely successful.

And it is extremely successful because it's not a bad language. Sure, there's lots of "wat", but a non-professional programmer is going to say "wat" about every strange error they get from another programming language that js would have just passed silently with a weird result. Then they will replace whatever construct isn't working with one that does, and get on with their life, unlike people who seem to have a lot of energy to waste on complaining.

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#96

Post by anoplus »

scrollaway wrote: post #66
simula67 wrote: post #62

> It turns out it’s useful to have a lingua franca for the web. No, I don't think so. Most people do not use JavaScript since it is useful. They use it since it is the only option available on the browser. There is a BIG difference. > Creating desktop apps in JavaScript lets developers choose from a vast range of freely available code libraries and frameworks, which takes much of the grunt work out of coding Lots of…

> Most people do not use JavaScript since it is useful. They use it since it is the only option available on the browser. You're not contradicting what you are replying to. People are using Javascript because it's the only option, but it is useful to have a lingua franca. I just wish that lingua franca wasn't Javascript.

Also, when it comes to languages. I rather have one language to be agreed upon, and to have small, gradual improvements to that language while keeping the world standard and simple. In case of JavaScript the improvement is strong typing.

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#97

Post by etnos »

simula67 wrote: post #62

> It turns out it’s useful to have a lingua franca for the web. No, I don't think so. Most people do not use JavaScript since it is useful. They use it since it is the only option available on the browser. There is a BIG difference. > Creating desktop apps in JavaScript lets developers choose from a vast range of freely available code libraries and frameworks, which takes much of the grunt work out of coding Lots of…

I'm having a hard time listening to anything you say with all that unnecessary name calling

Way to deflate your own point

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#98

Post by mafribe »

catnaroek wrote: post #71
mafribe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

trust a language that ... Where's the problem? JIT compilers work. Most high-level languages require compiler tricks for achieving performance from Scala to Haskell to Prolog. It's useful to distinguish between (1) having a clean, easy to understand semantics and (2) having a fast implementation. Use all the hackery in the world to get your language fast, as long as it's abstract semantics is easy and canonical.

> Most high-level languages require compiler tricks for achieving performance from Scala to Haskell to Prolog. To make things perfectly clear: I'm not against optimizations being performed automatically by compilers or runtime systems. What I'm against is unclean designs : deliberately performing an unsound optimization and then rolling it back is an unclean design. > Use all the hackery in the world to get your lang…

   is an unclean design.
It's not unsound. Otherwise you'det g incorrect results. You could say the design is wasteful, because you optimise and then throw away the optimisation. But it's hard to do better for some kinds of languages.

   trust a hackish language implementation
I agree. And indeed JIT compilers are hard to get right. But in practise even JIT compilers are much higher quality than applications: ask yourself, how many of the bugs in your code turned out to be compiler bugs, vs how many were ultimately your mistakes?

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#99

Post by Practicality »

dragonwriter wrote: post #56
halayli wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in denial. Javascript is everywhere nowadays. It has become the English of languages. It's not my favorite language but it has improved extensively. No one wants to maintain a web app, mobile app, and desktop app separately.

> It has become the English of languages. I'm pretty sure English is still the English of languages. JavaScript might be the English of programming languages, though.

You win the pedantic award for today. :)

Re: JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop

#100

Post by dccoolgai »

niftich wrote: post #40

The salient points of the article: - People are stuffing websites into Electron and packaging it as a native application - HTML/CSS/JS is considered 'hackable' because it's widely understood by today's semi-power-user audience Although the article doesn't say it, this seems to imply that: - Full-native development unique on each platform is considered too much effort, when you can get a cross-platform app with Electr…

What makes JS more "hackable"? Someone find that cartoon about the gaunt-looking guy and the laid-back kid when the girl asks them to hold her coffee and link it [edit: http://i.imgur.com/76Wtthy.jpg ].

...Because it gets the hell out of they way and holds your coffee for you and doesn't slap it out of your hand and throw a tantrum because it was actually a medium coffee...and it gives you the simplest no-BS object/array literals you can get...IMO opinion everyone wailing and beating their chest bemoaning the fact that JS got where it is fails to understand that it got there because it the "UX" of coding JS is just a lot more pleasant - and you can treat it as a compile target and do your work in a more type-obsessed thing like Typescript if that's your cup of tea without imposing on the underlying "hackability" of the language.

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