231–240 of 303 posts
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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.
JS won out the web because it came with HTML5, not the other way around.
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I would not call TypeScript/Babel making it a non-argument, because those two are separate languages that are compiled to Javascript. The language itself still has those limitations, you're just hiding it under the rug. Regarding performance, your solution means that in order to understand your site, you need to understand another language and javascript now. At which point, why swap between languages and mindsets wh…
Programming languages in general hide the limitations of machine code under the rug. Regarding performance, why don't we write our web applications in C++, Rust or Go? There is a lot of churn in front-end frameworks, but for back-end frameworks the ecosystem is more stable (I like ExpressJS, which is like the Rails for NodeJS). If you factor your architecture correctly (e.g. separate your domain model from your views…
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I would not call TypeScript/Babel making it a non-argument, because those two are separate languages that are compiled to Javascript. The language itself still has those limitations, you're just hiding it under the rug. Regarding performance, your solution means that in order to understand your site, you need to understand another language and javascript now. At which point, why swap between languages and mindsets wh…
Programming languages in general hide the limitations of machine code under the rug. Regarding performance, why don't we write our web applications in C++, Rust or Go? There is a lot of churn in front-end frameworks, but for back-end frameworks the ecosystem is more stable (I like ExpressJS, which is like the Rails for NodeJS). If you factor your architecture correctly (e.g. separate your domain model from your views…
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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…
Users also benefit. For instance, linux users can use the same web apps as windows users.
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> 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. Because JavaScript was, and basically still is, the only option for client-side web development - t…
There's a certain amount of irony in mentioning "Worse is Better" in this context. People trying to use Javascript as a surrogate C++^H^H^H Java will be sorely disappointed. People trying to use Javascript as something that blends Scheme and Smalltalk will be using it as its creator intended. While this won't make the extreme purists happy, for many of us, Javascript is an acceptable Lisp. I have come to prefer Javas…
To piggyback here: How long until we can just use whatever language we like, including Std.-Libs, package ecosystem, sandboxed FS (and thus DB support) and JIT it to JS in all commonly used Browsers?
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My hope is that with WebAssembly, it will stop mattering. JS development will probably go on like if nothing changed, but people that don't like it will be able to opt-out.
WebAssembly is a neater target format, but we can already compile to JavaScript today.
If WebAssembly takes too long, I can see JS compilers getting very good, but it's looming availability is discouraging that.
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…
I'm a Python guy who's working in Java at the moment. I don't particularly care for JS or frontend work, and I make no bones about it. But if someone were saying all this about the Python or Java communities, I'd be asking for evidence. And, frankly, I'd be pissed. So I think we should hold ourselves to similar standards -- don't just shit on a community because that's how you feel. Provide cases. And possibly even advice on how to improve!
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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 wa…
I have gotten to hate most Android apps, constantly sending notifications - spam on the screen, phone on the desk going "ding, ding, ding" all afternoon :-(
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…
I found the Tessel (https://tessel.io/), but its hardly a microcontroller - its a MIPS SoC.
It looks like the Espurino is more of a traditional microcontroller. But the unit cost is high - $40!
Is anyone using JS on a microcontroller in a high volume product?