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

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

#101

Post by roblabla »

tempodox wrote: post #98
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…

> 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).

Explain what the coincidence was ? There are alternatives everywhere (ActiveX, flash, java, visual basic IIRC). And yet here we are, with JS.

I believe JS came here because it actually is the best language we have had in the web. It's so easy to throw shit arround, but let's be honest with ourselves, this isn't purely out of luck.

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

#103

Post by Scarblac »

jbergens wrote: post #75
rer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have to migrate everything to javascript Why? What I really want is the whole browser to go away.

You do remember that Windows is the dominant os for end users? Almost all ui's would have to be created for Windows, and possibly for the other operating systems also. That's probably a lot of extra work.

Isn't Android more or less Windows' equal now, in terms of users?

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

#104

Post by roblabla »

dandare wrote: post #37

The answer is bit paradoxical: It is because JavaScript itself can change only very slowly. What you see changing is everything around JS but JS itself, while powering the whole web, is still to an extent the same scripting language that Brendan Eich prototyped in 10 days back in 1995. Why is that? Simply because the JS runtime environment - the browser - is not controlled by a single entity that could plan and enfor…

The language itself evolved as well though. Chrome/FF/Edge (the Big Three) all support a large subset of ES6. I use it in prod because I have the luxury to not have to care about those people stuck in the past. And the portion of older browser isn't that big anyway, thx to autoupdates. Only people using IE and safari are problems nowadays.

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

#105

Post by robinson_k »

fiedzia wrote: post #57

Imagine that you have a furniture factory. There is one room where one guy who works for you produces tables. In next room there is another who produces sofas. And then another one who makes chairs. The demand is great, so routinely you hire more people to produce more things. As you walk, you realise that each of them uses selection of screws and chisels and screws and wheels, and types of wood and door handles and…

> Java had its Sun, Python had BDFL Guido, JS has no such thing.

For JavaScript the TC39 is responsible for its improvement and standardisation. Thats were ES6 was developed. ES2016 aka ES6 took a fair amount of time, but the TC39 switched to "rolling releases". ES2017 aka ES 7 is already in the works and is going to be released 2017.

https://github.com/tc39

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

#106

Post by civilian »

coldtea wrote: post #84
civilian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Dude, comeon. The browser has evolved a lot as a platform, as has the hardware power of computers running them. Yes. It has evolved to counter-balance those advances in hardware power, in order to provide a sub-par 2000 native desktop application experience in a 2016 browser sandbox. > Maybe we're re-writing computer history Maybe? > but if that's the case then it's because we have to migrate everything to javascri…

We have to rewrite everything in JS because JS is the language that runs on browsers. :) If you were asking a higher-level why (why do we have to use the browser), look rer's sibling comment.

I wrote the phrase "wise old timers" with respect-- y'all truly have things to teach us. But it often feels that y'all just want to complain about how we're doing things wrong, rather than actually helping. I suspect that "old timers" is correct maybe 80% of the time, since the complainers are probably people who have years of non-JS experience and are disappointed that the new bootcampers haven't gone through their coming-of-age programming rituals. But I have a friend who is a member of the C++ master-race, so trust me, I know that gripes about browsers & JS can come from many kinds of people.

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

#107

Post by bloomca »

The problem is that everything in JS exploded during just few years (Node was published in 2009), and it took few years to build tooling around Node to start utilising all this power.

And then everyone started to build "rich" web applications (it is called differently every year), with the "best" tool existing. I personally see two major problems – usually cool startups who can afford using the bleeding edge will die soon (or will get enough money to completely rewrite it), so 'maintanence' in idiomatic way doesn't work here – life cycle is extremely small, and it reflects in the way libraries are written in JavaScript. Also, the barrier is low, and therefore we have a lot of complex websites built by novices, running in development mode in the actual production.

Community also is very "poisoned" with the idea that you _have_ to work in your evenings (contributing to OSS, writing your own or just playing with hot technologies), and therefore new stuff is baked extremely quickly. It is usually very low quality, and you have to cope a lot in order to make it work, and often you have to dive into source code, and it is considered as normal, which is quite sick from my point of view.

Also, it is truly "hype" community, which is super excited about what is hot now – and it means that today kings will be overthrown very soon (right now stuff like Cycle.js and Vue.js is gaining traction). Nobody wants to maintain their libraries – and very often you can see projects with a lot of stars completely abandoned.

Recently, Babel.js was defined as _defacto_ standard, and it basically started transpiling era, which is not going to end in the foreseeable future. It shakes the stability, and makes extremely easy to add new features (like stage-0), and people just used to unrealiable tools.

So, all of this works as a snowball, which only speeds up. People create more and more complex web applications, and also js is going into other fields (like microcontrollers, Node.js grows in popularity, React Native is super hot now). When it will stop? Nobody knows. Maybe WebAssembly after implementing will stop it (people will spread over competing technologies), maybe no.

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

#108

Post by cdata »

tempodox wrote: post #98
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…

> 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).

No, I agree with you, actually. Luck plays a huge part. It should inform all of us with opinions in this area about how little our opinions really matter.

Also, I disagree that users are suffering as a result, but that is a different discussion altogether.

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

#110

Post by Tomrn »

civilian wrote: post #61
combatentropy wrote: post #24

Is it because it lacks a shepherd? Perl has Larry Wall. Python has Guido van Rossum. PHP had Rasmus Lerdorf and later Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (Zend). Ruby has Yukihiro Matsumoto, and Rails has David Heinemeier Hansson. JavaScript came from Brendan Eich, but it was like a work for hire, wasn't it? Microsoft and Netscape just kind of ran with it. Then I guess it did have a shepherd, the W3, and all the browsers f…

Maybe replace "shepherd" with "standard lib". Python has a pretty complete standard lib. Javascript is lacking it, and that vacuum encourages things like jquery. But then there are people who see jquery getting bloated, and they really just want a few features, so they write underscore and lodash. We've got no standard lib, so we have a continual ebb & flow of unstandard libs.

hundred percent agree with this. A standard lib bundled with all browsers would solve so much of the framework madness.
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