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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

#161

Post by behnamoh »

alexwebb2 wrote: post #130
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 can't believe this is the top comment. Let's go point by point: 1) JavaScript has its warts and its gotchas like anything else (okay, maybe a few more). So what? Spend 50 hours building anything substantial with JavaScript and you'll get a good handle on them, and you'll be good to go for the next 10,000 hours. Same goes for just about any other language. Focusing on the weird edge cases might make for a nice blog…

If only web developers would unite and put an end to JS once and for all.

This is really sad, a whole industry that was once inspired by Unix philosophy and was supposed to be beautiful and fun, is now conquered by languages like JS, php, and Java: so ugly and so not fun.

I always thought programming should be something you do cause you like it, not because you're forced to do it. If you use JS cause "everybody else uses it" and "it pays more", then I'm sorry, you're screwed. I thought CS industry belongs to developers, not tech giants (Oracle, Microsoft, ...) who force Java and JS on everybody.

Someday, some body will stand up and say "Enough is Enough".

Edit: If you want to downvote, at least please tell me why I'm wrong...

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

#162

Post by mxuribe »

Sure these early days might show this being overkill, or less performant than traditional methods, but my hope is that this newer approach leads to other types of benefical apps. I'm keenly interested in how these types of approaches help for "unhosted" types of apps (see http://unhosted.org/), as well as offline first apps.

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

#163

Post by kybernetikos »

goatlover wrote: post #149
kybernetikos wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably because the head guy working on V8 had lots of experience with virtual machines going back to Self in the 80s. But it's kind of silly to say that JS VMs have outpaced Moore's law, given that interpreted JS was very slow to begin with. It's not the same as a compiled languge improving by that much in the same time. Basically, JS wasn't leveraging much of the computer's power until V8 came along.

It seems that you're complaining about some perceived meaning in my comment, but I'm not sure what it was.

Having written significant pieces of code in javascript over the last 13 years, I've benefitted massively from those speed increases, and while I'm aware of a number of reasons that they have occurred (including but not limited to the v8 engine - I remember reading excitedly about tamarin, tracemonkey and the like), I don't think it's silly to point out the sheer magnitude of the improvement.

I'm not trying to say that JS is going to save us from Wirth's law or anything, I'm just trying to give people context on what a huge jump it has been.

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

#164

Post by tracker1 »

falcolas wrote: post #112
fzzzy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> And it is extremely successful because it's not a bad language. Perhaps not a bad language, but I do think it falls into the same category as PHP - just good enough. It's just good enough to do what we want it to do, and given the lack of choice, we're willing and ready to pile abstraction upon abstraction upon it to try and reduce the pain involved with getting work done. And like masochists, we look at the result…

Compared to what? PHP is/was far, far worse than JS has ever been, and I remember when you couldn't declare a function in a function (IE3 iirc). There are a few, well defined quirks, and some other behaviors that are arguable, but JS is one of the most expressive languages around, and with the ES2017+ enhancements really nice.

JS is my favorite language, hands down... C# is a close second, and that's as much for the tooling as the language, though the p/invoke and native interfaces are pretty awesome. After that, there's some functional languages I like, and have been looking for a reason to use Rust or Go for something... beyond that, most languages have a lot of their own warts.

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

#165

Post by gaius »

alexwebb2 wrote: post #130
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 can't believe this is the top comment. Let's go point by point: 1) JavaScript has its warts and its gotchas like anything else (okay, maybe a few more). So what? Spend 50 hours building anything substantial with JavaScript and you'll get a good handle on them, and you'll be good to go for the next 10,000 hours. Same goes for just about any other language. Focusing on the weird edge cases might make for a nice blog…

You are forgetting that even Eich didn't want to do JS; he wanted to embed Scheme but was overruled by suits at Netscape who wanted to ride the Java hype. That's why the semicolons and curly braces. It really is indefensible on technical grounds.

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

#166

Post by hood_syntax »

rjbwork wrote: post #72
seibelj wrote: post #39

I know many languages but JS is what a lot of new companies need, therefore I have devoted myself to it. On my own time, I like to code in C, because it is a pleasure to use something so fast and close to the metal, and requires such a different style of programming (disciplined paranoia) and allows me maximum control over application resources.

IMO C and JS both stink. Give me statically typed, memory managed, expressivity or give me death.

C is a necessary evil (debatably necessary, but at the very least quite useful).

Apart from that, I agree with you. Static typing is a core tool for helping me manage complexity, and I wish I got to use it in my work.

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

#167

Post by tracker1 »

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.

It's very far from the only option server-side (node), but a lot of people are using it there... and on the desktop (various native tooling options, electron, etc), and in mobile apps (react native, nativescript, cordova).

I know someone who's wished for "one language to rule them all" for a long time and wants/wanted that to be Visual Basic... It's a matter of perspective as much as anything else.

JS can be a very beautiful/expressive language... and mocking some of the corner cases of coercion doesn't really help the argument. JS started as a language for input validation first... it works in a way that input validation passes/fails very cleanly. It makes it a great transport/middle-man language actually.

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

#168

Post by tracker1 »

anoplus wrote: post #96
scrollaway wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you want strong(er) typing, just create with TypeScript or flow... I don't see nearly the value in it that you seem to.

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

#169

Post by goatlover »

gaius wrote: post #165
alexwebb2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe this is the top comment. Let's go point by point: 1) JavaScript has its warts and its gotchas like anything else (okay, maybe a few more). So what? Spend 50 hours building anything substantial with JavaScript and you'll get a good handle on them, and you'll be good to go for the next 10,000 hours. Same goes for just about any other language. Focusing on the weird edge cases might make for a nice blog…

You are forgetting that even Eich didn't want to do JS; he wanted to embed Scheme but was overruled by suits at Netscape who wanted to ride the Java hype. That's why the semicolons and curly braces. It really is indefensible on technical grounds.

I think they also told him to make it forgiving, like html, so that beginners could use it. Thus the implicit conversion rules, optional semicolons, being able to leave new off a function constructor, not having to use var, and so forth.

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

#170

Post by tracker1 »

noobermin wrote: post #107
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…

For [1] many languages have "wat"'s. Also, the leap from "wat"'s to "absolutely bad programming" is a jump in reasoning. You can be a poor hacker in any language. For [2] and [4], they are issues with the ecosystem, which I suppose it related but isn't strictly js, ie., you don't have to use React (shock). For npm, at least that issue has been addressed. [3] is a social issue...it happens in many places. Can you clai…

I'm a fan of "You can write COBOL code in just about every language." I saw a pretty large VB5/6 app that was entirely styled like a COBOL app.. it was hideous to debug/use/follow, but it can be done... After that, I decided a lot of the time, it isn't the language that's the problem most of the time.
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