The fact that the author omits semicolons in JS somehow fits the theme of this post...
JavaScript is Good, Actually
101–110 of 369 posts
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A programming language where almost everything is mutable is not good. That's a weird criticism. Object-oriented programmers are premised on mutation. As for JavaScript itself, mutations can be avoided. 'const' to prevent reassignment, using Object.freeze, or just applying functional programming principles and keeping functions pure.
> Object-oriented programmers are premised on mutation I'm a Java OOP developer, and I make everything I can immutable. It's a design decision adopted by most of my colleagues.
Whoops. I meant OO languages, not OO programmers.
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you aware of ES6 Proxy? I may be mistaken, but almost every example of an issue that you have with the language seems to be resolvable using Proxy objects. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
Yes, and “handler.enumerate” deprecation is stated in this mdn link. I thoroughly checked every described [un]feature in my recent research. There is some space for error ofc, but I’m aware of most obvious things. Again, simple get/set of existing or known keys is easy, but try to proxy an arbitrary object, array or class instance and see how it falls apart. This is almost a rule in JS: every feature is somewhat ment…
We use proxies to watch models in our in-house MVC framework[1] and all those use cases are covered. You can watch setting array items with indexes, nested objects etc. It did take some jumping through hoops because the model also has to extend EventTarget which didn't like proxies. And we had to keep track of nested objects without creating new proxies on every call, but it's still not a rocket science.
Here the code of the model implementation: https://github.com/zandaqo/compago/blob/master/src/model.js
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can also write Swift code and use another transpiler to get JavaScript code from it and you would say that JS is great. I haven't read the article yet, but what you're saying is something completely different, in my opinion. If you write Swift you're writing a completely different language, with all the hassles usually introduced when transpiling. TypeScript, however, is just Javascript with some of the assumpt…
In the end, you have to transpile your code to JavaScript. Whether you are writing TypeScript or Swift code. But I agree, Typescript has more similarities with JS than Swift does.
That is true, but there are a lot of risks associated with transpiling completely different languages that are not there when using TypeScript. For example, if TypeScript ever goes away, you simply transpile it to Javascript once (i.e. strip away the explicit type annotations) and continue to work on the resulting Javascript - in a different language, that would be a complete mess. Furthermore, TypeScript integrates really neatly with the rest of the Javascript ecosystem (because it's just Javascript), saving you a lot of hassle and lock-in.
Reducing all that to "but it has to be transpiled to Javascript" is a simplification that doesn't help in highlighting potential concerns associated with transpilation, in my opinion.
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#105As a long time JS dev I don't claim expertise in other languages, but every time I go back to check out new features in C++ or Java they feel more and more like JavaScript with types than "C with classes".
Actually C++ these days is moving more towards strong typing and immutability - imho the exact opposite of JavaScript...
That's good to know. Introduction of iterators, lambdas, first-class functions, smart pointers, references, auto and in such in C++11 and Java left me with the feeling of C family languages converging on some similar set of features that resemble JavaScript more and more.
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#106Switching back to Java after having spent a long time in JavaScript land with modern standards made me realize how great JavaScript had become. The biggest reason for JavaScripts greatness to me is JSON. I couldn't understand how Java developers put up with such bulky ways to deal with data. After some time in Java land I've come back to appreciating its strengths again though. Code completion is nice. I'm kind of ho…
The code completion in JAVA is probably the only way to write java. It is bit too bloated for my taste with all classes and subclasses that handle almost the same thing (speaking mainly from Android perspective)
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of valid criticisms against JavaScript. This is a fact. It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible. I doubt anyone calls JS terrible on its own merits. There is a lot of hate against the runtime (edit: I mean the browser, not JS VMs or interpreters). The runtime enforces JS and the runtime itself is enforced everywhere. There is…
> It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible I'm wondering what would be an example of a great language? Because we know that there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses
My response to this is usually that Ruby is a great language because it's easy to get useful work done with a large, meaningful subset of the language. You can ignore the warts just by not using them. You can't do that in JS, because the warts are so fundamental. (yes, you can be tripped up by library authors in Ruby, but there's community backpressure against providing footguns).
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A programming language where almost everything is mutable is not good. That's a weird criticism. Object-oriented programmers are premised on mutation. As for JavaScript itself, mutations can be avoided. 'const' to prevent reassignment, using Object.freeze, or just applying functional programming principles and keeping functions pure.
1) Many languages won't allow you to redefine a type. 2) Mutate the prototype of a "frozen" object and you would indirectly affect it through its prototype chain... or mutate an nested property inside a "frozen" object. Most of JS standard library and most popular frameworks and libraries have fully mutable definitions. That sucks and is BAD design decision.
> Many languages won't allow you to redefine a type.
This counterargument is not a good one. Just because other languages do things a certain way doesn't mean it's the right way in every situation. C++ has multiple inheritances and template metaprogramming, but that's C++.
> Most of JS standard library and most popular frameworks and libraries have fully mutable definitions. That sucks and is BAD design decision.
It's subjective whether this is a bad design decision. For the standard library, this enables polyfills. As for the popular libraries / frameworks, they have the option of freezing the prototype. They don't do this because they make the fair assumption that the client is not mutating the library state. It's the programmer's fault for breaking the interface contract and mutating the implementation. At any rate, this would be a criticism of the ecosystem, rather than language. If the criticism is about untrusted third party code, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison between JavaScript and other languages that are operating in different environments.
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does "world-class software developer" even mean anything other than a big ego?
It could mean that they see themselves as competing in a global marketplace. That they don't rely on geography and are quite happy to be ranked against the best of them. Not necessarily ranked highly but content to compete based on productivity and quality of work alone. Probably not what they meant though :)
The Leica selfie in the header says everything that needs to be said.
Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are great languages in your opinion?
If we’re talking about “dynamic CRUD over socket abstracted to death”-style tasks, and not considering minor preferences like syntax, then python, lua, most of lisp/schemes, perl. All of these allow enough meta-anything to do: ./file.src: func api_foo() for x in objs x.a = fetch(x.b) ui.btnok.enabled = yes commit() And have foo exported as api, and when called, all clients/servers, databases synced, validations passe…
I think python is a terrible language. It has so little syntax you can't tell the difference between various things. A variable declaration, a reassignment, a keyword, a whatever else, they don't have any visual distinction from each other.
I also find that python has reserved a whole bunch of keywords that I can't use as function names, making APIs hard to create with appropriate names. You also have to pollute your code with self everywhere.
It is also really slow, has no where near the number of libraries on github as javascript, is not a client-side language, doesn't have anything like babel, which can allow you to do a lot more than reflection/introspection (but not the same things exactly), etc.