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Modern JavaScript

blog.rebeccamurphey.com

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Re: Modern JavaScript

#11

Post by Xurinos »

rmurphey3 wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

Argh, I hate reading slides without the accompanying audio/video, because I feel like I miss out on 90% of the context.

As a speaker, let me just say that I have yet to figure out how to handle this. When I'm presenting, I want people listening to me, not reading the slides. When people are consuming the slides online afterwards, they can quickly get misconstrued without the context of my spoken words. All of that said, I'll add a link to the video from the blog post :)

I have come to the conclusion that communicators must present to different audiences in different formats. Slides used in public speaking are no different from hand gestures. Slides posted online for the same speech have to be touched up or completely redone for the new online audience. The audience who heard my speech might benefit from having a copy of my slides as memory cues.

Re: Modern JavaScript

#12

Post by MatthewPhillips »

jonnycat wrote: post #10

Suddenly CoffeeScript makes a lot more sense to me: "the language itself is held hostage by browser vendors, some of whom have shown a strong inclination to not give a fuck about owning up to and fixing their egregious mistakes" So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. We can't easily change it, but we have to start building better tools on top of it.

I still think Javascript is a pretty elegant language. None of it's features are unique to only it, but it's the combination of the prototype model, the completely dynamic nature, the ability to easily convert objects to and from strings, the callback nature... all of that together makes it as elegant as any language I can think of. At the same time I welcome CoffeeScript and the many DSLs appearing on top of Javascript (Mobl, for example).

Re: Modern JavaScript

#13

Post by spenrose »

Excellent stuff. One issue Murphey's slides mention only glancingly is the Javascript-as-visual-design-aid vs. Javascript-as-programming-medium conflict. If jQuery is DOM-centric, well, a whole lot of JS jobs are "make it look professional using HTML, Javascript, Photoshop, and your trained artist's eye," so why shouldn't it be DOM-centric?

That suggests those who fight the good fight from a software engineering perspective will not win with a frontal assault. C++ and Perl were both subject to years intense pressure to rethink their basic assumptions; both refused* and carried on with more-or-less the same group of folks who loved them warts-and-all.

In other words, the evidence suggests that it will be easier to move forward by organizing and strengthening those who agree with Murphey (and Crockford, etc.) than by converting those who, to use her phrase, "don't know what they don't know" but can do amazing things with Photoshop.

* I acknowledge there is an argument to be made that Perl 6 contradicts my assessment. My point is that Perl 6 has not brought a bunch of previous Perl critics into the fold.

Re: Modern JavaScript

#14

Post by Jebdm »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6
Jebdm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've got it backwards, at least when it comes to good talks. It's always seemed to me that at least 80% of the important content is usually discernible from the slides (especially since you can probably infer the other things that the speaker was talking about, minus stuff like stories and jokes which are usually fluff anyways).

I don't really have it backwards - I'm just describing my experience. :/ I also always heard that slides are supposed to be guideposts to a presentation, not the main point of one.

I was too; that's why I said "I think". I've heard that too, but it nearly always seems like the "good bits" get put in the slides while a lot of the other things that the speakers say I could have done without. Of course, the rest of the stuff is often interesting, just not usually nearly as useful.

Re: Modern JavaScript

#15

Post by mcantelon »

jonnycat wrote: post #10

Suddenly CoffeeScript makes a lot more sense to me: "the language itself is held hostage by browser vendors, some of whom have shown a strong inclination to not give a fuck about owning up to and fixing their egregious mistakes" So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. We can't easily change it, but we have to start building better tools on top of it.

>So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side.

Huh?

Javascript is a high-level, dynamic language with very nice metaprogramming capabilites (compared to Ruby: http://fingernailsinoatmeal.com/post/292301859/metaprogrammi...). Totally bizarre to compare it to assembly.

Re: Modern JavaScript

#16

Post by jamesbritt »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6
Jebdm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've got it backwards, at least when it comes to good talks. It's always seemed to me that at least 80% of the important content is usually discernible from the slides (especially since you can probably infer the other things that the speaker was talking about, minus stuff like stories and jokes which are usually fluff anyways).

I don't really have it backwards - I'm just describing my experience. :/ I also always heard that slides are supposed to be guideposts to a presentation, not the main point of one.

I also always heard that slides are supposed to be guideposts to a presentation, not the main point of one.

I've increasingly been viewing slides as a means to get people to just look up from their keyboard or phone and stop twittering or chatting for at least a minute or two.

Re: Modern JavaScript

#17

Post by jonnycat »

mcantelon wrote: post #15
jonnycat wrote: post #10

Suddenly CoffeeScript makes a lot more sense to me: "the language itself is held hostage by browser vendors, some of whom have shown a strong inclination to not give a fuck about owning up to and fixing their egregious mistakes" So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. We can't easily change it, but we have to start building better tools on top of it.

>So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. Huh? Javascript is a high-level, dynamic language with very nice metaprogramming capabilites (compared to Ruby: http://fingernailsinoatmeal.com/post/292301859/metaprogrammi... ). Totally bizarre to compare it to assembly.

I made the comparison in the sense that if you want to use another language on the client-side (like CoffeeScript, for example) you end up compiling down to JavaScript as the low-level implementation.

Re: Modern JavaScript

#18

Post by rudiger »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #12
jonnycat wrote: post #10

Suddenly CoffeeScript makes a lot more sense to me: "the language itself is held hostage by browser vendors, some of whom have shown a strong inclination to not give a fuck about owning up to and fixing their egregious mistakes" So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. We can't easily change it, but we have to start building better tools on top of it.

I still think Javascript is a pretty elegant language. None of it's features are unique to only it, but it's the combination of the prototype model, the completely dynamic nature, the ability to easily convert objects to and from strings, the callback nature... all of that together makes it as elegant as any language I can think of. At the same time I welcome CoffeeScript and the many DSLs appearing on top of Javascr…

Indeed. When you consider the alternatives at the time, Java and VBScript, JavaScript doesn't look so bad...

Re: Modern JavaScript

#19

Post by jashkenas »

jonnycat wrote: post #10

Suddenly CoffeeScript makes a lot more sense to me: "the language itself is held hostage by browser vendors, some of whom have shown a strong inclination to not give a fuck about owning up to and fixing their egregious mistakes" So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. We can't easily change it, but we have to start building better tools on top of it.

A pretty decent part of the CoffeeScript MO is to start implementing things proposed for future versions of JavaScript ... but that we won't be able to use cross-browser for years and years. For example:

* Destructuring Assignment.

* Splats (Variadic Arguments).

* Lexical "this".

* Array and Object comprehensions.

* Classes (As sugar for prototype wrangling).

* String interpolation.

... to name the bigger ones. Many of these can be found in draft form on the ECMAScript Harmony wiki: http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:strawman

Re: Modern JavaScript

#20

Post by rhizome »

jonnycat wrote: post #17
mcantelon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client-side. Huh? Javascript is a high-level, dynamic language with very nice metaprogramming capabilites (compared to Ruby: http://fingernailsinoatmeal.com/post/292301859/metaprogrammi... ). Totally bizarre to compare it to assembly.

I made the comparison in the sense that if you want to use another language on the client-side (like CoffeeScript, for example) you end up compiling down to JavaScript as the low-level implementation.

Machine language, then. Assembler is compiled, too.
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