I for one welcome our new Libre Office overlords.
Does LibreOffice still look like a Windows 3.11 application?
Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
121–130 of 459 posts
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
>even worse language What's wrong with JS, exactly, that isn't made up for by its advantages? I see these 'kool-aid' / 'JS is cancer' comments all the time, but they don't come with any real details. I feel like you've probably never really used JS, if I'm being honest.
Kool-aid in the sense that JS is extremely attractive to MBA types that don't have to write anything with it. There is a huge pool of JS developers (quality is questionable but price range is mostly low), browsers run everywhere, Node.js made it possible to run the whole stack on it, so that's a win for MBA types and a great value proposition. The fact that it's a historically atrocious language doesn't matter as the…
Best comment so far
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much more real world evidence does HN need to see before the "JS isn't a real language" meme is abandoned? Pretty sure we're up to billions of real world value created by software written in Javascript. If you're still dismissive at this point, it's time to catch up. You've missed the boat.
It's a "real" language, it's just not a terribly good or fast one. It's works decently when its use is limited to what it was made for: manipulating web pages. For anything else, the "designed on the back of a used piece of toilet paper" starts to shine through. And no, a JIT can't save you from this, it can only make things acceptable. That it can create "real world value" is an extremely low bar, which is passed by…
What part of ‘acceptable’ is unacceptable to you then?
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#124Oh well, the kool-aid is strong. Next round of what Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away... Can somebody please design even worse language so that we can progress by reimplementing everything in it, keeping us occupied for the next 20 years?
this js-is-not-a-real-language stand is only to be expected from someone like a professor or a computer science student. universities and educational institutions in general will always be the last ones to adapt to changes, after the rest of society has moved forward, and they will try imposing those conservative opinions on everyone who are not in their camp. times are changing, computers are becoming more complex a…
Except computers have not gotten more complex. We are dealing with the same kind of filesystems, virtual memory, relational databases, encryption, compression, and network stacks as 20 years ago.
Objections against javascript are not Luddite objections against all types of higher level abstractions; the complaint is that javascript is not suitable for the creation of complex high quality software. If you beat your head against the javascript walls long enough can get something to work eventually, but that's not much of an endorsement.
The only thing javascript has going for it is the delivery mechanism, and that is what makes it so compelling for business use. But this is not because javascript is so good, it's that the other methods of packaging/delivering software are so painful.
The total absence of high quality software written in javascript is sufficient evidence to conclude that javascript is not a tool suitable for serious application development.
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#125Hi there, original tweeter here. Just to clarify: no one said when this work would land, simply that we are working on it! Sorry to disappoint XD, but I guess blame the OP.
Happy to take the blame :) It was too interesting a tidbit not to share though.
not your blame to take, perhaps its the guy who is vaguely tweeting without official capacity to do so...
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much more real world evidence does HN need to see before the "JS isn't a real language" meme is abandoned? Pretty sure we're up to billions of real world value created by software written in Javascript. If you're still dismissive at this point, it's time to catch up. You've missed the boat.
It's a "real" language, it's just not a terribly good or fast one. It's works decently when its use is limited to what it was made for: manipulating web pages. For anything else, the "designed on the back of a used piece of toilet paper" starts to shine through. And no, a JIT can't save you from this, it can only make things acceptable. That it can create "real world value" is an extremely low bar, which is passed by…
I wonder if they are using TypeScript.
The old Javascript were very bad, recent Javascripts were bad, today's Javascript are OK, future Javascript / TypeScript is actually pretty decent.
Of course I do hope something else has taken its place.
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#127Hi there, original tweeter here. Just to clarify: no one said when this work would land, simply that we are working on it! Sorry to disappoint XD, but I guess blame the OP.
when you say rewritten in JavaScript, you mean acutally rewritten or just cross compiled to Javascript ? Or a bit of both ?
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a "real" language, it's just not a terribly good or fast one. It's works decently when its use is limited to what it was made for: manipulating web pages. For anything else, the "designed on the back of a used piece of toilet paper" starts to shine through. And no, a JIT can't save you from this, it can only make things acceptable. That it can create "real world value" is an extremely low bar, which is passed by…
>it's just not a terribly good or fast one From everything I've seen, its performance sits just below Java (4x slower, perhaps) on some standard algorithms or tasks, and significantly faster than languages like Ruby, Python, etc.. I never see hate for those languages like for JS, so I'll disregard that. >not terribly good This one never has made sense. What is it missing that makes you hate it so? I think it has rath…
Have you ever used a language like Elixir? After using Elixir, my first thought was "why the f would anyone even use JS in 2018?" That's how poor the design choices of JavaScript are. Not to mention that the name itself is trademarked by the biggest troll (Oracle corporation).
After using something like Elixir, you'll even wish if Javascript could be permanently banned from the Software industry for ever.
I use Elixir + Ruby + Coffeescript and I still wish JS was never invented.
https://twitter.com/bendhalpern/status/578925947245633536?la...
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#129Atwood's Law - "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."
Can we skip to the bit where we start re-writing software that we re-wrote in JS in other, more appropriate languages? :P
Not yet. Let's wait a little longer, that way those of us who would do the writing will be more valuable.
Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
#130Other tweets in thread are interesting too: No they are not electron apps. They are compiled to native code. It's now finally one toolchain(#webpack) It's one codebase and it compiles to: Web Android IOS MacOS UWP WIN32 (only one that uses electron)
another tweet on that thread: > how is that even possible? there are tons of legacy features in there, COM/OLE APIs, SDKs, plugin architecture, macro system, VBA interpreter, VBA IDE, graphing components etc. Almost 30 years of development. No way MS is going to rewrite all of that. (Maybe the "mobile" version) I think this is a strong indication that all these technologies are going away.
This would be suicide for Office. I struggle to believe that Microsoft is replacing the full Windows desktop version of Office with a version rewritten in JS. It makes no sense. Many, many, many businesses absolutely rely on the features you're mentioning, and many others that would be a tremendous undertaking to re-implement. There has to be something that's not being communicated right here. Maybe they mean the "lite" versions of the programs.