261–270 of 476 posts
I wish Matz had been there with Rubyscript. JS wasn’t as powerful back then; it took over a decade for it to evolve enough where people would really use it for much other than client-side validation and neat UI tricks. In comparison, Ruby was a great language to use, and it would’ve grown more quickly.
I wish they’d just used scheme
It doesn't have to be this way. Hopefully Brython[0] which lets you do client-side Python scripting takes off. Imagine doing full stack web dev without seeing a single line of JS. [0] https://brython.info/
Seriously though, I'm putting a lot of hope in the LiveView/Stimulus Reflex/etc approach.
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Presumably anything popular enough has a good chunk of terrible devs? I'm guessing there are some very unpopular languages out there that the % of highly skilled devs is pretty high, but I don't know if that means much ;)
Curious about the relative areas of esoterica... Are there bad COBOL developers still practicing? FORTRAN? What about Ada? Erlang? Smalltalk? The mainframe families?
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There are lots of terrible js devs, because js is easy to start with. I bet most js devs would not be able to make a "hello world" in C. And pointers? What is that? So for those people(not meant in a negative way) it is good that they can use a language to get things done, even if they have no academic background.
Even great JavaScript developers don't have to be able to do C and pointer stuff. This has value, but there are many other things which bring more applicable value. However there are toooo many "jQuery developers" with no understanding of the underlying things, while JS+libraries enabled them to do quite fancy things.
Also, it did help me recently, working with wasm. Not compiling it yet, but using a libary.
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Brendan Eich addresses that topic in this interview. The whole interview is (very much!) worth a read but here's some key parts about the name https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653798/javascript-creator... >It was all within six months from May till December (1995) that it was Mocha and then LiveScript. And then in early December, Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and it became JavaScript. And the idea was to…
So, basically, JavaScript was originally annointed to serve the function within the JVM ecosystem, that ended up being served by Groovy? Why didn’t that happen? And why did it take so long before we got Groovy instead, if Sun wanted was imagining something like it way back in 1995?
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Brendan Eich addresses that topic in this interview. The whole interview is (very much!) worth a read but here's some key parts about the name https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653798/javascript-creator... >It was all within six months from May till December (1995) that it was Mocha and then LiveScript. And then in early December, Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and it became JavaScript. And the idea was to…
So, basically, JavaScript was originally annointed to serve the function within the JVM ecosystem, that ended up being served by Groovy? Why didn’t that happen? And why did it take so long before we got Groovy instead, if Sun wanted was imagining something like it way back in 1995?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescript_(programming_langua...
These days, ironically, Telescript is a model for how distributed computation works in the 3rd world, and even in the first world. But Telescript basically would have made the lattice structures more hybridizable to project information and jobs within the context of already existent social networks and maybe provided a better nexus for useful work done vs power given up (it was made on a very astute observation about the energy, work, power, time, information, transmission nexus) before anyone named a "peer to peer network", a distributed consensus protocol, or introduced money into the picture.
I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterpris…
Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. I once had a boss who thought I could write Java Android apps because I knew Javascript from web development. "They're the same thing, right?" Lifting a line from somewhere deep in the bowels of the internet, I told him that, "Java is to Javascript as ham is to hamster." Got fired shortly after that. Company folded a couple of weeks later. Life moves on.
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So, basically, JavaScript was originally annointed to serve the function within the JVM ecosystem, that ended up being served by Groovy? Why didn’t that happen? And why did it take so long before we got Groovy instead, if Sun wanted was imagining something like it way back in 1995?
Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck.
Looking back at interviews and industry articles from that era, there is a common theme of Sun hating Microsoft. Lots of companies and people hated Microsoft but Sun seemed to make it their central ideology. As a result, they took their eye off of making great technology that customers could use to solve their problems. It's a pity because they were so far ahead of the game at that point that they could have developed into something wonderful instead of being absorbed by Oracle, with little trace left besides Java sleepwalking through the modern era.
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Even great JavaScript developers don't have to be able to do C and pointer stuff. This has value, but there are many other things which bring more applicable value. However there are toooo many "jQuery developers" with no understanding of the underlying things, while JS+libraries enabled them to do quite fancy things.
Yes, but my point was, if you know about pointers, you are likely a better js dev than average as you have some background knowledge about the computer. And know what memory is and why it is not unlimited. And why some operations are expensive and others not. Also, it did help me recently, working with wasm. Not compiling it yet, but using a libary.
Being capable of two different languages (TS and JS doesn't count ;)) however is a useful indicator.
> JavaScript is analogous to Visual Basic in that it can be used by people with little or no programming experience to quickly construct complex applications. >JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users ove…