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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

#131

Post by st3v3r »

api wrote: post #64
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…

> "Full-native development unique on each platform is considered too much effort, when you can get a cross-platform app with Electron" Yes, it's this. Full native development is awful since every platform is completely different, and other cross-platform solutions like Qt are a bit behind the web in terms of modern look and feel and developer base. But Electron is also awful, since a hello world app uses 100mb of RAM…

"But Electron is also awful, since a hello world app uses 100mb of RAM."

Is it that awful, though? Most computers come with 4-16GB of RAM.

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

#132

Post by vcarl »

smacktoward wrote: post #86
davej wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> > 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. Also, in Electron apps you can access the Chromium Dev Tools directly in the app (unless the app author has disabled it). Chromium's Dev Tools are pretty much the gold-standard for hacking during runtime.

> Chromium's Dev Tools are pretty much the gold-standard for hacking during runtime ... if you don't include any IDE with a built-in debugger.

Chromium dev tools essentially IS an IDE with a built-in debugger. You can set breakpoints, step over/into/out of code, monitor network requests, view/edit the DOM tree, edit CSS in real time... For some code, you can even edit it while it's executing. Plus it exposes a REPL at window scope.

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

#133

Post by st3v3r »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #29
raquo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one likes that, but 1) HTML/CSS/JS is sill the only truly cross-platform (mac/windows/linux/web/ios/android/etc.) UI platform/ecosystem in 2016, and it will probably stay that way in the foreseeable future because OS makers love their walled gardens. 2) An app's memory efficiency is not a top 10 priority of an average solo-or-small-team developer's concerns, because that's not what most users pay for. Electron/NW.…

Python would like a word with you about point 1)

Python can work on desktop, but it's solutions for mobile are iffy at best.

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

#134

Post by lucideer »

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…

[2], [3] and [4] I would argue are not problems specific to JS, but are problems with "lingua francas" in general. Ubiquity, massive massive general popularity and low barriers of entry for a language will lead to an ecosystem dominated by the NIH and overengineering of eager & inexperienced programmers, and by egos. This would occur were any language put in JS' position.

The challenge is navigating such ecosystems in a selective and informed way, which is a programming skill in itself.

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

#135

Post by kybernetikos »

sdegutis wrote: post #125
nothis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the whole "{} + [] == 0" thing is cute and all, but isn't that just tip-of-the-iceberg hilarity? Isn't the real problem with javascript that it's slow and messy?

I was under the impression modern JS interpreters JIT to machine code and are fast. Kind of like how Java was slow in 1995 but today is kind of amazingly fast. Which I guess implies that there are two ways a language can become fast: one is by being designed for speed, and another is by becoming extremely popular/useful and having tons of millions of hours of thought and work put into making it faster.

JS engines have improved by about 2 orders of magnitude in speed for actual use over the last 10 or so years. They've outpaced Moores law.

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

#136

Post by rzzzt »

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…

There is no "View source" button for native applications, and you can not modify them and see the results immediately.

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

#137

Post by 0xmohit »

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.

> I just wish that lingua franca wasn't Javascript.

Why?

Just because undefined is not a function [0]?

[0] https://twitter.com/vikasgorur/status/744204277745254400

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

#138

Post by [deleted] »

api wrote: post #64
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…

> "Full-native development unique on each platform is considered too much effort, when you can get a cross-platform app with Electron" Yes, it's this. Full native development is awful since every platform is completely different, and other cross-platform solutions like Qt are a bit behind the web in terms of modern look and feel and developer base. But Electron is also awful, since a hello world app uses 100mb of RAM…

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by noxToken »

fzzzy wrote: post #95
pcwalton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

When I first started learning JavaScript, I wondered how people became proficient at the langue with all these weird quirks[0] that don't raise errors. Turns out that there are a bevy of things to help combat these quirks. Two of them are strict mode[1] (which can be scoped[2] in instances were libraries/frameworks would fail running in strict mode) and linters.

Strict mode and linters do not fix everything. This is doubly so if your developers ignore the warnings and errors that the linter throws. The language isn't inherently bad, but plain old JavaScript is not beginner friendly for new developers. It requires the discipline to not just throw things together.

[0]: https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/unified/ [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... [2]:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

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

#140

Post by lloyd-christmas »

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…

> Learn something else.

No. I've never understood the anti-[language] viewpoint. Wouldn't it be great to have every language available in every ecosystem? Why bother with web assembly when we could just replace JS with python because that's what _I_ want.

[1] Let's be honest, This is every language. There are some stupid, stupid, STUPID parts of JS that everyone enjoys pointing out. And... since everyone points them out, nobody actually uses them.

[2] It happened and they changed the root cause within a week. I would view that as a pretty good ecosystem. Now take a look at python 2 vs 3. Almost 8 years later, and we still need: http://py3readiness.org/

[3] Every language.

[4] Just because people talk loudly about something, doesn't mean most people use it. 90% of the internet still runs on jQuery: http://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/javascript-library

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