> 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…
> JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, Funny how long it took node.js to appear and make this bit of press release a common reality.
>> can be used by people with little or no programming experience to quickly construct complex applications ... has it? ;-) (Note: joke with deference to the huge pool of incredibly talented js developers! But there are still a lot of mind bogglingly terrible js devs too)
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.
> I bet most js devs would not be able to make a "hello world" in C.
Like if you just gave them a text editor and the gcc manpage? Why would they know? It's an entirely new language to them. How are you going to learn a new language's syntax or library functions without a reference?
If you gave a JS programmer a C programming textbook or tutorial they'd type out and run Hello World in about 2 minutes, like anyone else.
The industry is cyclical and to be forward thinking all you have to do is describe what's already happened and assume it will happen again. ;-) The things being done with JavaScript today are not new, nor is the idea that a server and client would coordinate to run interactive apps. That fundamental concept has been reimplemented in many different ways until we've landed on the current rube goldbergian monstrosity th…
I agree with your basic premise. However, in this particular instance, what would have been the historical equivalent ("already happened") of scripts sent by the server to the client during the request response cycle, which could perform layout and logic in the client? If you're simply referring to code that could run on both client and server, your point is clearer to me.
Display PostScript[1] maybe? Developed by NeXT in 1987.
It is fun considering I was not yet born yet when this came out. Most all of the SW languages I use are older than I am... python, C++, Java, JS, perl, elisp.
Didn't visual basic support some kind of client side code?
IE (3? 4?) let you specify vbscript instead of JavaScript as the language in your script tags. Edit: introduced in IE3 (1996) apparently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_3
IE 3 does support VisualBasic as another script language. Later IE versions simply supports any scripting language that is provided by the underlying platform (including javascript). People tend to regard the whole IE4/Windows 98/"Desktop enhancement package" thing as Microsoft being anticompetitve and trying to kill Netscape, but the whole thing has solid technical background. Well, the whole "PWA" concept existed at the time except it wasn't called that.
The great "script vs programming language debate". The difference is clear to you because you have a clear definition in your mind. The problem is that the definition changes depending on who you talk to, which invites endless debate.
Well it's a pretty bad debate if people aren't agreeing on definitions. Hence this whole chain of comments.
Basing the definition on whether it's compiled or not doesn't help much.
Python is actually compiled to bytecode, just like Java. Is it not a scripting language?
Or is the distinction that the Python bytecode is interpreted whereas Java is JIT compiled to machine code? Well, Java didn't get the JIT compiler until version 1.3 - so was Java 1.2 a scripting language?
Reminds me of one of Microsoft's first Dynamic HTML demos: There were two buttons, one labeled "Our Web Site", the other labeled "Our Competitor's Web Site". When you moved the mouse over the "Our Competitor's Web Site" button, it would quickly slide out from under your cursor before you could click it! Then when you stopped moving your mouse, the "Our Web Site" button would slyly slide right underneath your mouse! D…
And thus the concept of the web permitting the site developers to actively make it harder or even impossible for the user to express their wishes was born.
Nah, Java applets lost because of the deployment nightmare they had become after MS was blocked in their attempt to coopt the language (they were barred from shipping incompatible JVMs, so they stopped shipping JVMs and Java IDEs altogether). ActiveX was winning, but that really was a security nightmare. Eventually enough of the useful parts of ActiveX crept into JS enough to build real stuff with it.
20/20: Java applets needed better integration, access to the host browser's runtime. Like accessing the current page's DOM, being able to hook the event loop. I didn't care at the time. I hated all things HTML, CSS, JS. Such a downgrade from state of the art. I regarded the browser as terrible means to deliver, bootstrap applets. Just like Flash. One thing I didn't appreciate at the time was the genius of HTTP and UR…
JS is an accident of history, and won because of market quirks rather than technical merits. JS was created because Netscape thought it would be cool to have webpages that were somewhat interactive. They were a relatively small and chaotic startup throwing shit at the wall; MS did what MS does, which was to embrace / extend / extinguish, and by doing so they established JS as a must-have feature for all browsers. Before GMail and GMaps, JS was not particularly successful - it was largely just a novelty. Seriously-interactive stuff would still use ActiveX, Flash, Java, or just live outside the browser altogether (Napster...). Then a combination of JS improvements (XHR), publicity efforts (Crockford and GMail), and the market standardizing on minimum common denominator (avoiding deployment and security issues of plugins) left us alone in the room with this beast.
Nothing technically wrong with Java and JS of course, but this terrible PR piece which desperately tries to pitch Java as an integral part of the web, going even as far as naming an innocent scripting language for web browsers JAVA script truly demonstrates that the mid-to-end-90's were the dark age of computing (at least the corporate side).
For a starter, having no integer types and non-symmetric comparison operators looks technically wrong to me.
I spent the late 80s working in XBase, which also had a single numeric type, though you could enforce the desired precision by saving numbers in tables.
Android and ripping Sun off. Then they were hoping that no one would buy them, not even themselves cared to own Java after their trick. So now they push Kotlin, while researching Fuchsia, and keep a bunch of lawyers quite happy.
So if Google had chosen to use a different language for Android then Sun would still be around? I don't think so.