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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

#171

Post by ggregoire »

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.

uh? Most JS programmers have a background in computer science and software development like you.

I went at the university and learned C, C++, Java, Lisp, SQL. I worked 3 years with C# and 2 years with Symfony.

Well, JavaScript is still my favorite language/ecosystem, and I'm obviously not alone.

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

#172

Post by niftich »

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 a long time, there was no political will to kill Javascript; there was barely enough political will to reform it -- see the Eich vs. Wilson debate [1].

Now that JS has seen 2 new versions in 2 years, momentum has picked up and it's keeping up with the times much more so than in the late 2000s when its flaws were glaring and apparent. One of the interesting side-effects of the extra effort going into the web platform is the 'wasm' effort [2] which could replace Javascript at some point -- yes, the usual caveats about GC and DOM apply, but they're coming [3][4].

Though the political line is that wasm isn't intended to replace Javascript, once it attains feature parity (like it's headed towards), it'll be trivial to do so, regardless of what the designers intend. When that time comes, JS will probably still be used as a written language, but wasm will become the new compilation target.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript#4th_Edition_.28aban...

[2] https://webassembly.github.io/

[3] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/219

[4] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/GC.md

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

#173

Post by sidlls »

t1amat wrote: post #69
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…

All of the above. If your application can be designed as a web application, you can use responsive designs and progressive enhancement techniques to create an experience that works across any platform with a web browser - with one code base. This is a pretty amazing thing, and for various business-related reasons this may seem like the right move.

This whole thing just stinks of forcing the browser to be a (terrible, poorly functioning, and inconsistent) abstraction over the OS. The browser/webapp model of application development is just awful.

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

#174

Post by lloyd-christmas »

tracker1 wrote: post #156
Udik wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wondered how people became proficient at the langue with all these weird quirks[0] (links the usual loose equality table) Why don't you all just use === instead of ==? Tell me, how long does it take to learn it?

There are plenty of times where you want ==, or for that matter, any falsy/truthy expression in JS... about the only points where I have issues with some of the defaults for falsy/truthy come down to the number 0... Outside that, I find that there are times where I'm dealing with inputs that can be a string or number, and the coercion can be handy. I would never suggest people start learning programming with JS first…

> There are plenty of times where you want ==

FWIW, I've never used ==

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

#175

Post by zeveb »

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…

> 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.

Spending 10,000 hours building things with JavaScript sounds like a pretty good definition of Hell.

JavaScript is an actively, abusively bad language. It's not that it has a few warts: it's nothing but warts. Its fundamental design flaws are obscured only by its superficial design flaws.

It's a really bad, tasteless language.

> I don't think that's a reason for anyone to stoop to the level you have, though.

I really don't think he 'stooped' to anything.

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

#176

Post by serge2k »

behnamoh wrote: post #161
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…

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…

> (Oracle, Microsoft, ...) who force Java and JS on everybody.

Why call out Microsoft? They aren't forcing Java or JS. They came up with C# and Typescript instead.

I can't speak to Typescript, but C# is way more fun to write than Java. It's not particularly interesting or glamorous, but it is nicer to write.

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

#177

Post by t1amat »

sidlls wrote: post #173
t1amat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the above. If your application can be designed as a web application, you can use responsive designs and progressive enhancement techniques to create an experience that works across any platform with a web browser - with one code base. This is a pretty amazing thing, and for various business-related reasons this may seem like the right move.

This whole thing just stinks of forcing the browser to be a (terrible, poorly functioning, and inconsistent) abstraction over the OS. The browser/webapp model of application development is just awful.

I don't think anyone would argue that web development is perfect. What is? But, thanks to the ubiquity of the web browser, it is the only way to create a common user interface across any platform. Given that context I am grateful to have it.

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

#178

Post by tracker1 »

bbcbasic wrote: post #153
dccoolgai wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Hmm not convinced. Is it pleasant UX that you can put petrol in your diesel car because the nozzle fits? Would it be pleasant UX to have your bank let someone withdraw money from your account without ID? Bleach bottle with no safety cap? Also the laid back kid of JS will throw a tantrum if the coffee is not a coffee. He'll throw the tantrum at your customer though (at runtime), not your developer (at compiler time).…

Considering the variety of fuel sources a diesel engine can use (oil, deisel, etc), I'd say it is pretty useful... ;-)

Yeah, and good luck dealing with that remote API that now gives you an extra field in the JSON or XML, and your compiled client in a few thousand workstations needs to be updated and redeployed because of said fit.

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

#179

Post by vetinari »

woah wrote: post #42
gr3yh47 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python would like a word with you about point 1)

I use a network simulation software inside of lubuntu inside of a VirtualBox inside my Mac. VirtualBox is a stream of headaches, and you suffer a big performance hit. What I wouldn't give for the software to serve an http/css/js interface so that I could run it with docker or natively instead.

Make sure that the virtual machine has "paravirtualization interface: kvm" setting for linux guests, that the guest tools are installed and if you really use network, adapter type: virtio-net doesn't hurt. And also, that you have enough RAM. Then, virtual machines in VirtualBox are fine.

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

#180

Post by zeveb »

dccoolgai wrote: post #100
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/…

> it gives you the simplest no-BS object/array literals you can get

I really don't think that:

    {
      "foo": "bar",
      "baz": ["quux", 1, true]
    }
is simpler than:

    ((foo bar)
     (baz (quux 1 true)))
Quite the opposite, really.
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