Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#31

Post by infinite8s » Mon, Apr 26, 2010, 4:50 PM UTC

mikeklaas wrote: post #21

baddox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet as soon as you attempt to implement a DOM manipulation standard for Python you'd introduce all the same cross-browser incompatibilities as Java has. Also, in many ways Javascript is superior to Python. Closures are the only examples I know of off the top of my head.

Python has as much support for closures as javascript. The only significant feature in this respect that it is missing (that I am aware of) is multi-statement, in-expression lambdas. Javascript's syntactic nicety is higher there, but on balance I think python's is far superior. Both great languages, though.

Although python's lexical scoping is all screwed up (python 3.0's nonlocal keyword fixes this, but it is still ugly).

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#32

Post by jrockway » Mon, Apr 26, 2010, 7:53 PM UTC

mhansen wrote: post #24

jrockway wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

public/private is the most pointless distinction ever invented. Enforced privacy makes reuse nearly impossible. That said, I don't really think Javascript is all that special. Prototype OO sucks.

Can you explain why you think x sucks/is pointless?

Enforced privacy limits reuse but doesn't prevent any particular class of bugs (calling random private methods is no worse than calling random public methods; you should feel equally bad about both).

Prototype OO precludes introspection. You have "an object", and that's as much as you can ever know.

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#33

Post by wvenable » Mon, Apr 26, 2010, 9:55 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #32

mhansen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you think x sucks/is pointless?

Enforced privacy limits reuse but doesn't prevent any particular class of bugs (calling random private methods is no worse than calling random public methods; you should feel equally bad about both). Prototype OO precludes introspection. You have "an object", and that's as much as you can ever know.

You're looking at enforced privacy from the callers perspective not the callee perspective. For the callee, the benefit is you can change or remove any private methods or private data structures and be guaranteed not to affect any callers. It's the benefit of basic encapsulation.

Although I completely agree with you about Prototype OO it doesn't necessarily preclude introspection. You can find out what kind of object it is (by looking at the constructor property) and you can iterate the methods and properties. Introspection is not a problem. But there are no guarantees -- if you find out that your object is a "bicycle" there is no guarantee it has a "pedal" method even if it had one on creation.

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#34

Post by BenjaminCoe » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 2:36 AM UTC

jonpaul wrote: post #9

I use to hate Javascript. I attempted to build a large enterprise system using ExtJS... I ran into a number of problems. I then realized that I could accomplish the same task using GWT/GXT. It was successful. I still don't like Javascript, but I'm warming up to the idea of embracing it. It seems to me that with the advent of Node.js and document oriented databases that use JSON for their document description, such as…

Yeah, for my personal website I'm about to try out node.JS with MongoDB -- I think it will be an exciting experiment. As more frameworks grow up around technologies like these, I really think server-side JavaScript makes a ton of sense -- most importantly, it can lead to a lot more sharing of application logic between the static and client-side JS parts of a site.

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#35

Post by baddox » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 5:21 PM UTC

mhansen wrote: post #22

baddox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet as soon as you attempt to implement a DOM manipulation standard for Python you'd introduce all the same cross-browser incompatibilities as Java has. Also, in many ways Javascript is superior to Python. Closures are the only examples I know of off the top of my head.

Java != JavaScript

I meant Javascript. I just typed the wrong name, but I didn't confuse the two languages.

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#36

Post by baddox » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 5:22 PM UTC

mikeklaas wrote: post #21

baddox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet as soon as you attempt to implement a DOM manipulation standard for Python you'd introduce all the same cross-browser incompatibilities as Java has. Also, in many ways Javascript is superior to Python. Closures are the only examples I know of off the top of my head.

Python has as much support for closures as javascript. The only significant feature in this respect that it is missing (that I am aware of) is multi-statement, in-expression lambdas. Javascript's syntactic nicety is higher there, but on balance I think python's is far superior. Both great languages, though.

Last year my Languages instructor mentioned that there was some problem or incompleteness with closures in Python because Guido didn't want to fully implement it or something. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#37

Post by BenjaminCoe » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:08 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #30

mnemonik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Even trying to ensure some measure of public/private data requires a lot of boilerplate code." Just use closures. Thats less code than you would have in many other languages.

What do you think that boilerplate code is made of? Closures of course. You simply can't make large scale software using just closures.

I disagree, regarding JavaScript's ability to scale. It is quite easy to implement classical inheritance inside JavaScript, public and private methods really do not seem like a must have to me for code to be 'scallable'. It seems to me that these concepts are loosely enforced (or not present) in many popular web languages already.

Re: Why I'm Becomming a JavaScript Convert

#38

Post by mnemonik » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 11:43 PM UTC

BenjaminCoe wrote: post #37

wvenable wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think that boilerplate code is made of? Closures of course. You simply can't make large scale software using just closures.

I disagree, regarding JavaScript's ability to scale. It is quite easy to implement classical inheritance inside JavaScript, public and private methods really do not seem like a must have to me for code to be 'scallable'. It seems to me that these concepts are loosely enforced (or not present) in many popular web languages already.

Yup, look at Python. Private methods are private by convention (leading underscore), not because the interpreter enforces privacy.

Python code bases scale easily, in my experience.