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

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

#281

Post by lexicality » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 8:46 AM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #104

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.

Or if they use Debian. Evergreen isn't evergreen if it's on Linux.

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

#282

Post by roblabla » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 9:09 AM UTC

lexicality wrote: post #281

roblabla wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or if they use Debian. Evergreen isn't evergreen if it's on Linux.

Meh. Desktop users should all use a rolling release distro anyway. I'll never understand the point of versioned distros for desktop...

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

#283

Post by raerpo » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 10:49 AM UTC

planteen wrote: post #240

bloomca wrote: post #107

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…

Do you have more details on JS in microcontrollers? I'm curious about real-time systems, etc. 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?

I saw pretty interesting stuff with Johnny-five.

http://johnny-five.io/

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

#284

Post by rplst8 » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 1:07 PM UTC

cdata wrote: post #256

rplst8 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I believe that part of the reason is the ease of access to JS development. It allowed an inordinate…

There are a few condescending attitudes at play in your comment. Consider this: just because a language is easy to pick up doesn't mean it attracts "poorly trained devs". It just means it attracts more devs, because it is easier to get into it. Putting aside any value judgement of mass appeal, my experience suggests that the most important differences between a poorly-/un- trained dev and any other kind are time and…

> So, being easy to use is a much more powerful feature for a language / framework / platform than most.

I never said that JS was easy to use. I said it was easy to access. With JS, you don't really need an IDE, compiler, runtime etc. You need a browser, and a text editor and you can get started. It's unlike a lot of other languages in that way.

In some ways, I'd argue that languages like JavaScript are harder to use, or at least harder to use well. There is a reason that languages like Ada exist with very strong type systems. Granted, Ada is not a web development language, but I think my point still holds true since languages like TypeScript are making inroads in this arena.

I think spinning up "convincingly useful" UIs is part of the problem. First, in a lot of ways it's the wrong place to start for software design. It raises expectations and can create a contract in the minds of the client, customer, or user that this is what the software will do, and it will do it perfectly.

I'm not claiming that I (or any other programmer) started out knowing everything. But taking the time to learn, apprentice, and hone the craft of software development (the full cycle, not just writing code) is part of the game.

I think the attraction of a lot of the current web frameworks is the "whiz-bang" results you get, and it's my humble opinion that you should no more build software that way than you should a smartphone, bridge, or building. I think people need to have more respect for the software engineering field, follow best practices, and not throw out everything we've learned as each new Next Big Thing (TM) comes out.

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

#285

Post by lloyd-christmas » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 2:15 PM UTC

Roboprog wrote: post #183

warbiscuit wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I've just taken to ignoring those responses. As far as I'm concerned, jQuery & lodash are part of the "standard library". Certainly there are cases where one or the other isn't needed for a particularly application. But if you're doing anything with the DOM, or doing anything more complex than simple if/then callbacks, you're either using them or you're reimplementing them bit by bit. Certainly jquery has some.…

I have been using Ramdajs, rather than lodash, but they both do about the same thing. One difference is that Ramda puts the functions before the data in its library calls, so that you can curry/apply the app logic function (e.g. - perhaps for a map or filter), save the resulting function and use it elsewhere. Lodash looks nice, though, in that its partial function application mechanisms seem a bit more flexible than…

lodash has that ability from a sub-module "lodash/fp":

https://github.com/lodash/lodash/wiki/FP-Guide

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

#286

Post by Roboprog » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #285

Roboprog wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Ramdajs, rather than lodash, but they both do about the same thing. One difference is that Ramda puts the functions before the data in its library calls, so that you can curry/apply the app logic function (e.g. - perhaps for a map or filter), save the resulting function and use it elsewhere. Lodash looks nice, though, in that its partial function application mechanisms seem a bit more flexible than…

lodash has that ability from a sub-module "lodash/fp": https://github.com/lodash/lodash/wiki/FP-Guide

Thanks. I wonder if somebody has a good comparison of the Lodash vs Ramda written up. Probably, but I haven't done the google and evaluation yet :-(

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

#287

Post by lexicality » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #282

lexicality wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if they use Debian. Evergreen isn't evergreen if it's on Linux.

Meh. Desktop users should all use a rolling release distro anyway. I'll never understand the point of versioned distros for desktop...

People like stability.

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

#288

Post by roblabla » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

lexicality wrote: post #287

roblabla wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Desktop users should all use a rolling release distro anyway. I'll never understand the point of versioned distros for desktop...

People like stability.

I never had any problems running archlinux for 3 years now. Im sure there are other rolling release distro that are more stable.

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

#289

Post by bbbbbbbbbbb » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

There are two different questions there.

Angular 1 was written by people who knew nothing but OO programming. JavaScript isn't OO. So they spent a lot of time square pegging a round hole because they were ignorant of what they were doing (probably a group of young coders).

People are now starting to get on the functional train (which JavaScript is more like than OO), and angular is trying to now fix the fact they were short sighted and too opinionated about the wrong things.

JavaScript, in general, has always been in a rapid state of change. Or, more broadly, the UI of the web. From flash and silverlight to mootools and jquery and CSS animations and canvas... there isn't a good way to do web UIs yet. There is a lot of trial and error happening which makes for some rough waters.

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

#290

Post by stephenr » Sun, Oct 23, 2016, 8:37 AM UTC

jbuzbee wrote: post #168

snarfy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"What's wrong with native apps?" Can you even imagine having a native app for everything we do today in browsers? An app for each Credit Card I hold. A native app for each news site I read. A native app for every social media site. A native app for all the map searches, directions, etc. we all use. Security updates? Nightmare. Multi-OS support? forget about it. We'd all be back to a Windows monopoly. No thanks.

> An app for each Credit Card I hold

If a bank/credit union/etc doesn't have a native app in 2016, I doubt they have a web app that's usable on a phone either.

> A native app for each news site I read

Right, because RSS readers and aggregators aren't totally a thing.

> A native app for every social media site

Those literally exist today.

> A native app for all the map searches, directions, etc. we all use

You realise you don't need a new app for each search you want to do? I don't even understand this premise.

> Security updates? Nightmare

Right, because having half-baked web-apps with millions of user's personal data all stuck in a big fat juicy database in one spot, just waiting to be breached and spread like herpes in a brothel has worked out so fucking well.

Every major mobile platform and the two leading commercial desktop platforms have app store infrastructure which provide automatic updates of client-installed apps.

> Multi-OS support? forget about it.

Right, because no app ever has been developed cross platform, and every web app ever created works perfectly in every browser with zero effort from the developer.

> We'd all be back to a Windows monopoly.

Wat.

Edit: additionally, a number of the things you describe, i.e. news sites, aren't web-apps in the way most people think. They offer very limited if any interaction or functionality for the user except navigating to find/read other news content, and possibly leave feedback. Those sorts of things are what the web excels at, because they're essentially used for one-way content viewing.