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

Post by behnamoh » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:21 PM UTC

serge2k wrote: post #176

behnamoh wrote: post #161

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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.

Post by yid » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #144

alexwebb2 wrote: post #130

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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... I don't mind MY JavaScript. It's everyone else's that drives me bonkers. Tracking down things in JS is a timesuck of epic proportions. Much of the time, it just isnt't any fun.

Post by jdhawk » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:30 PM UTC

zeppelin101 wrote: post #19

ndepoel wrote: post #13

JavaScript didn't "conquer" anything. It was just one of the first languages around when the web was still in its infancy, and simply never went away.

Javascript became far more significant than what it used to be. We can largely thank Microsoft (AJAX) and Google (V8) for that.

Post by catnaroek » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:31 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #145

catnaroek wrote: post #30

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Could you name a JIT compiler that doesn't do this kind of thing, yet offers performance comparable to AOT-compiled languages? (FWIW, I'm not saying it's impossible. It's perfectly possible, but you'd need a source language that offers much better static guarantees than the typical language that a JIT compiler is written for.) --- Sorry, can't reply to you directly, because “I'm submitting too fast”. So my reply goes…

> that _doesn't_ do this kind of thing Why does that matter to anyone? > you'd need a source language that offers much better static guarantees than the typical language that a JIT compiler is written for Java and C# are both statically, strongly typed languages where JITs are the dominant implementation. Almost by definition, it's impossible to write a JIT compiler that outperforms AOT compilation without looking at…

Post by jsprogrammer » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:37 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #129

jsprogrammer wrote: post #57

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JS is safe C with types and pointers stripped from the syntax. I don't get why people don't understand its popularity. HTML lets you put boxes on the screen and CSS lets you paint-by-number(id/name/selector). If you aren't doing any of those things, I am very curious to know what exactly you are doing.

JS is most definitely not safe C. It has a brace based syntax with if statements and for loops but other than those superficial similarities it's semantics are vastly different.

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