Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#91

Post by revelation » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

civilian wrote: post #60

jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

Dude, comeon. The browser has evolved a lot as a platform, as has the hardware power of computers running them. Maybe we're re-writing computer history, but if that's the case then it's because we have to migrate everything to javascript and the wiser old timers want nothing to do with it. * Do you really want to write CSS without a pre-processor? * Do you really want to control a webpage's state without JS models in…

I don't want to do any of these things. They are the result of bad decisions in years past.

Now more and more JS abstractions are heaped upon the pile and we call it the best thing since sliced bread. No.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#92

Post by jjnoakes » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #68

nickstefan12 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the lack of a good standard library might have something to do with it. I'll admit im not sure.

The shaming of mature libraries doesn't help either. Try showing off something with jQuery these days.

Do you have evidence that jQuery is shamed because it is mature? I've always seen jQuery not chosen (shamed doesn't seem like the right word) because it doesn't provide the level of abstraction that folks are looking for, and because it mainly papers over cross-browser differences which get smaller every year.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#93

Post by douche » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

It's because JS is, at it's core, a shit language. All of this flailing around and creating a new framework every week is like the poor sods trying to struggle through the mud at Passchendaele. The more you fight it, the deeper it gets.

Better languages have sensible defaults, and a decent standard library built in. If we could run Python or Java natively in the browser, nobody would bother with all of this illogical complexity that has arisen to try to make writing Javascript moderately tolerable.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#94

Post by cdata » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #42

lacker wrote: post #16

The open-source-JavaScript community right now is just the largest, most active open source community that has ever existed. Check out the stats that GitHub recently announced: https://octoverse.github.com/ Open source JavaScript activity as measured by pull requests has doubled (!!) in the past year. It's more than the next two languages (Java and Python) combined. Most of the top repositories on GitHub are JavaScri…

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

It's easy to sit back and critisize JavaScript and the web with dismissive comments like this. I have heard variations on these same memes for many years.

But something that I almost never hear: critics offering a candid explanation for why their platform / language / framework - which maybe wasn't perfect but CERTAINLY compared to JavaScript was awesome - did not become the de facto tool across as diverse a spectrum for delivering features / products / tools to users.

It's always fair to criticize so that we ask ourselves the hard questions. So, it's also worth asking ourselves if we are staring too close to the wall when we try to paint other languages as backwards and therefore bad (or at least a bad choice). Just maybe, the language feature bullet list in your head (and corresponding subtleties of implementation) isn't the thing that matters most. Maybe the thing that really matters is something not as easy to codify as a language tool chain, like human consensus.

Also, it is false association to suggest that quantity != quality is somehow particular to JavaScript. Infinite monkeys will produce infinite crap no matter what brand typewriter you give them.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#95

Post by collyw » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

cdata wrote: post #94

jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

It's easy to sit back and critisize JavaScript and the web with dismissive comments like this. I have heard variations on these same memes for many years. But something that I almost never hear: critics offering a candid explanation for why their platform / language / framework - which maybe wasn't perfect but CERTAINLY compared to JavaScript was awesome - did not become the de facto tool across as diverse a spectrum…

In my experience working with Perl and Python most external libraries work and are well documented. Whenever I have tried JavaScript its a vastly poorer experience. Admittedly I have far more experience with the first two languages, but that would likely find more problems with Perl or Python, no?

(I don't really do PHP, but I have a feeling that I would find the experience closer to JavaScript from talking to colleagues and reading about it).

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#96

Post by civilian » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #87

civilian wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. I guess you're welcome to do that? We browser coders will just continue to go to market faster. It's pretty cool that, if you put your work in, you can make a GUI on the browser that is accessible to all desktops and phones. That's 2 billion users. The obvious question is: what would you replace it with? Do you want to replace it all with native apps? Or do you think that this whole internet thing is overrated?

What's wrong with native apps? They use less memory, battery, and processor than an interpreted stack. They can be more responsive than the hardwired 16ms latency built into the browser. If you need network it's not hard to open a socket. The browser itself is a native app opening sockets. In pretty much every respect, native apps are better for the user than web apps. The person that benefits the most from web apps…

I agree, they are better and faster! But they're expensive, from an engineering-time point of view. I think that small teams with a new product would struggle to have solid native apps on ios, android, windows, osx and linux simultaneously.

I've also gotten a pretty bad taste in my mouth about some companies pushing a native app down my throat. TripAdvisor would only show me the first three reviews on a place if I was browsing via mobile, as a way to push me to download the app. And now that they're on my android they sent me a couple of spammy notifications before I disabled them. I wanted to treat TripAdvisor like a website, not like an app that has access to all phone.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#97

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

cdata wrote: post #94

jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

It's easy to sit back and critisize JavaScript and the web with dismissive comments like this. I have heard variations on these same memes for many years. But something that I almost never hear: critics offering a candid explanation for why their platform / language / framework - which maybe wasn't perfect but CERTAINLY compared to JavaScript was awesome - did not become the de facto tool across as diverse a spectrum…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#98

Post by tempodox » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

cdata wrote: post #94

jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

It's easy to sit back and critisize JavaScript and the web with dismissive comments like this. I have heard variations on these same memes for many years. But something that I almost never hear: critics offering a candid explanation for why their platform / language / framework - which maybe wasn't perfect but CERTAINLY compared to JavaScript was awesome - did not become the de facto tool across as diverse a spectrum…

> explanation for why their platform / language / framework [...] did not become the de facto tool

You're implying this happened to JS because of some merit. But it didn't, it was just sheer coincidence and bad luck (for most of us at least, including users).

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#99

Post by robmccoll » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #42

lacker wrote: post #16

The open-source-JavaScript community right now is just the largest, most active open source community that has ever existed. Check out the stats that GitHub recently announced: https://octoverse.github.com/ Open source JavaScript activity as measured by pull requests has doubled (!!) in the past year. It's more than the next two languages (Java and Python) combined. Most of the top repositories on GitHub are JavaScri…

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

Things re-invented in JS (and by most language communities as they evolve):

  - Build systems
  - Dependency management
  - Some form of code modularity and references between modules
  - Preprocessing/macros/templating
    - Source to source
    - DSL embedding
  - Compartmentalization of state (globals bad)
    - More advanced type systems
    - OO-ish systems
  - Forms of data flow
    - Message passing
    - Functional style (including limiting mutability)
  - Forms of control flow
    - Frameworks providing more magic
    - Calls for less magic and more explicit control flow
    - Exception handling good
    - Explicit errors better
    - Event loops
  ...

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#100

Post by roblabla » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #95

cdata wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to sit back and critisize JavaScript and the web with dismissive comments like this. I have heard variations on these same memes for many years. But something that I almost never hear: critics offering a candid explanation for why their platform / language / framework - which maybe wasn't perfect but CERTAINLY compared to JavaScript was awesome - did not become the de facto tool across as diverse a spectrum…

In my experience working with Perl and Python most external libraries work and are well documented. Whenever I have tried JavaScript its a vastly poorer experience. Admittedly I have far more experience with the first two languages, but that would likely find more problems with Perl or Python, no? (I don't really do PHP, but I have a feeling that I would find the experience closer to JavaScript from talking to collea…

I've never had problems with docs in JS, both node and browser. The MDN is a limitless ressource of information for the base language, and for libraries, well you're going to get undocumented libraries in any language. It might be more "obvious" in JS because of the sheer amount of libraries, but I've found python libs that were very poorly documented too.

This is a problem we should be HAPPY to have. Having libraries doing EXACTLY what we want, that's just missing docs, is better than the alternative I've found in many other languages : no libraries, so we have to do everything ourselves.