Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 40 posts

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#21
post #3

What if it is? JS isn't that bad, the ecosystem big enough to avoid the small libs written by n00bs and easy to acces s thanks to npm. Npm isn't perfect, but better than what most languages have. Many people already know JS and it's pretty much the easiest language to get started with, you just need a browser and an editor. Most people don't use the best solution for a problem because often nobody knows what this wou…

Any suggestion on which human language is better than English?

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#22
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be the minority but I don't consider it a burden to need more than one app for something. Even today people have installed a half dozen chat apps to keep up with friends on different networks. If half the sites require Firefox and half Chrome then that's still only two apps enabling dozens of web apps for daily use.

It wouldn't be half/half, because many websites would then abstain from using a scripting language at all. Maybe more something like 90% pure HTML/CSS, 5% Firefox, 5% Chrome?

> 90% pure HTML/CSS

Like in the good old days

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be the minority but I don't consider it a burden to need more than one app for something. Even today people have installed a half dozen chat apps to keep up with friends on different networks. If half the sites require Firefox and half Chrome then that's still only two apps enabling dozens of web apps for daily use.

Among the sites I visit frequently are several that only work well in Opera, one or two that only work well in Firefox, and one that only works at all in Chrome.

I struggle to imagine how I would build a site that only works in Opera, even if I were trying to.

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#25
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among the sites I visit frequently are several that only work well in Opera, one or two that only work well in Firefox, and one that only works at all in Chrome.

I struggle to imagine how I would build a site that only works in Opera, even if I were trying to.

Load it up with whatever bloat causes every browser other than Opera to struggle at every moment with scrolling a page. Which is absolutely the case on my 4 year old laptop. For whatever reason, Opera handles this like a dream, while Firefox and Chrome cannot, though I frequently go back and try them again.

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#26
Javascript is always dramatically overused at the top of every market cycle: DHTML in 1999, Web 2.0 in 2008, Angular/React/etc now. This too shall pass. And then reappear, worse.

If you are truly sick of javascript, I have something for you:

http://intercoolerjs.org

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#27
post #3

What if it is? JS isn't that bad, the ecosystem big enough to avoid the small libs written by n00bs and easy to acces s thanks to npm. Npm isn't perfect, but better than what most languages have. Many people already know JS and it's pretty much the easiest language to get started with, you just need a browser and an editor. Most people don't use the best solution for a problem because often nobody knows what this wou…

Something I've found recently on projects is that the npmcompare site makes it much easier to pick the library that has all the traction. It becomes very stark when you're comparing the package with 350k weekly downloads with one which has been downloaded by the original author and his cousin.

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#28
post #5

If you stop thinking like a front-end web dev, and take a step back from the whole thing, the status quo is truly insane and embarrassing. A many-billion dollar, world changing industry has been exclusively constrained to one dynamically-typed, weird language cooked up by one guy in a hurry, over 20 years ago. How can such a phenomenon even exist, without programmers falling over themselves to create a development ec…

A many-billion dollar, world changing industry has been exclusively constrained to one dynamically-typed, weird language cooked up by one guy in a hurry, over 20 years ago.

I'm definitely not a lover of JavaScript as a language, but it helps when you start thinking about JS as a "assembly language for the web". Very few people get worked up about whether x86 assembly language is a bad language we've for the most part moved on to a higher level of abstraction.

The same could be true for JavaScript. When I have to use JavaScript without TypeScript especially with a codebase that I'm not familiar with, it's like walking on a tightrope not knowing what you might break. You're always afraid of doing refactorimgs that would be a CTRL-K away with Resharper.

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#29
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to imagine how I would build a site that only works in Opera, even if I were trying to.

Load it up with whatever bloat causes every browser other than Opera to struggle at every moment with scrolling a page. Which is absolutely the case on my 4 year old laptop. For whatever reason, Opera handles this like a dream, while Firefox and Chrome cannot, though I frequently go back and try them again.

Load it up with whatever bloat causes every browser other than Opera to struggle at every moment with scrolling a page. Which is absolutely the case on my 4 year old laptop. For whatever reason, Opera handles this like a dream, while Firefox and Chrome cannot, though I frequently go back and try them again.

Opera and Chrome use the same rendering engine now. Why would Opera work better than Chrome?

The second question is what type of computer is it? I have an old Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz laptop/4GB RAM (circa 2009) that I've repurposed as a Plex Server. After installing an ad blocker and getting rid of unnecessary services, I don't notice a real world difference between that and my usual laptop - a Core I7 2.66Ghz - except for the difference between an SSD and a 5400rpm hard drive.

Web browsing is just not that processor intensive - a four year old A6x iPad can browse the modern web well.

Re: Ask HN: What if JavaScript isn't the solution to everything

#30
post #17
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in the minority.

No, he's not. My mother runs Firefox, Chrome and IE. She uses each one for different sites because certain sites only work well on certain browsers. PS: The idea that the web has parity is a joke. It doesn't.

What sites these days work better with Firefox?
Post reply on HN