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Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

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Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#181

Post by Amezarak »

hellofunk wrote: post #114
DougN7 wrote: post #98

Ugggh :( I miss my old Outlook 2013. Outlook 2016 is so slow it can’t keep up wirh my typing. I thought it already was javascript. Guess it will be even slower still. Super! (not)

Really the choice of language is unlikely to be the cause of any slowness you are experiencing in different versions. JS can be faster than a native experience, all depends on program architecture. The main JS engines are blazing fast and a low-latency UI is perfectly possible; sluggishness is not a sacrifice you must accept when coding in nearly any language in 2018. But bad practices in any language can lead to a p…

Maybe so, but I have never seen a fast Electron app.

VS Code, Discord, Slack, etc., all have awful performance on older hardware where native programs like the full Visual Studio fly.

It's my personal suspicion that people cheerleading JS all are working with fantastic developer hardware, where the performance impact is pretty muted.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#182

Post by bitL »

throwaway13456 wrote: post #128
nawgszy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Elixi…

That tweet was golden!

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#183

Post by emodendroket »

capelio wrote: post #46
bitL wrote: post #5

Oh 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?

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.

Nobody is claiming you can't write real software in JS. What they're saying is that it is a waste to do so when so much better tools are available. When you're in the browser there are such huge benefits that it makes sense. Elsewhere I find it hard to understand JS mania.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#184

Post by jhall1468 »

pjc50 wrote: post #158
capelio wrote: post #46

Earlier 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 very much in the same state that VB was, or even "Excel programming" is today: it certainly works and it certainly produces a lot of business value. It's just that the downsides appear further down the road; maintainbility and scalability issues, or intrinsic conversion causing data loss. That kind of thing. Every time someone waits for an Electron app to load, or watches it eat their ram? That gets added to the…

These aren't Electron apps. They are applications written in Javascript and compiled to native via ReactXP and react-native-windows.

Maintainability is a problem regardless of language, scaling is moot as these run native code, scalability is an odd word choice given we are talking about desktop apps, and intrinsic conversion can be solved via TypeScript, Flow or any other typing framework. C, Java and C# all have their own set of downsides as well, but we don't pretend those aren't "real" languages.

You are correct that "it doesn't have to be this way" which is why native compilation exists and is continuing to grow.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#185

Post by slig »

PunchTornado wrote: post #48
FridgeSeal wrote: post #39

So of all the good, far more suitable languages they could use, we're getting it written the flaming pile of trash that is JavaScript? Why though?

because it is not a pile of trash. the programmer can be a pile of trash though.

> because it is not a pile of trash

For instance, see the `Set` implementation here " rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... and note that it doesn't even has `union` and `intersection` in the standard library. You have to copy/paste some code and place somewhere to have a minimum usable `Set` implementation.

Pretty much a "pile of trash" in my opinion.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#186

Post by iKSv2 »

artmageddon wrote: post #169
morrbo wrote: post #142

Why not C#? Seems a bit of a missed opportunity to feed some of the APIs undoubtedly created for this into the new .net core stuff. I guess i'll just keep dreaming of the day when i can reliably convert a docx into a pdf without using office interop.

Reading this thread, with all the Javascript talk, makes me feel like I should be scared of continuing to be a C# developer..

I had to like really think 10 times over, to comment or not, being a PHP dev....

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#187

Post by StavrosK »

xamuel wrote: post #159
arghwhat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (4x slower, perhaps) "4x" is a lot slower, and a lot of things are much worse than this. You have to have deep knowledge of the VM (such as knowing how "hidden classes" work in V8) to be able to get JS close to Java. > so I'll disregard that. You shouldn't. Claiming a JIT'ed language is fast due to being faster than Python, an entirely interpreted language, is like saying a moped is a fast vehicle because it's fast…

>Most language features, really. Name a few. >terrible "prototype" system >malice that is "this" It sounds like you are talking about ES5, not ES6+

> Name a few.

He did, literally exactly after that sentence.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#188

Post by scq »

pjc50 wrote: post #158
capelio wrote: post #46

Earlier 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 very much in the same state that VB was, or even "Excel programming" is today: it certainly works and it certainly produces a lot of business value. It's just that the downsides appear further down the road; maintainbility and scalability issues, or intrinsic conversion causing data loss. That kind of thing. Every time someone waits for an Electron app to load, or watches it eat their ram? That gets added to the…

I don't think JavaScript itself is the problem here. Electron is slow to load and uses a lot of memory because it's loading an entire multiprocess Chromium runtime with all of the Web platform implemented, optimized for speed and security rather than memory usage.

Microsoft are using React Native here (aside from the Win32 build), which is going to be a lot more lightweight because it relies on the native platform for the heavy lifting.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#189

Post by slig »

JCSato wrote: post #161
0xcafecafe wrote: post #118

I wonder how much of global warming is caused by inefficient code written in higher level languages requiring more powerful hardware to run. It might be infinitesimal but still non-zero.

"Javascript is literally killing the Earth" might be the most HN comment I've ever read

The NoScript crowd must be proud.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#190

Post by mcintyre1994 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #155
morrbo wrote: post #142

Why not C#? Seems a bit of a missed opportunity to feed some of the APIs undoubtedly created for this into the new .net core stuff. I guess i'll just keep dreaming of the day when i can reliably convert a docx into a pdf without using office interop.

I'm guessing that in this case they're only talking about the "office software running in the browser" version of Office 365, not the "subscription pricing model for the desktop suite" version.

I'm guessing they're just going to ship an Electron app and they won't be different codebases any more.
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