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JavaScript Is Weird

jsisweird.com

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Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#61

Post by dfabulich »

pansa2 wrote: post #53
nicoburns wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of these are implicit type coercion issues. Which is fairly easily banned with a linter. Once you've done that, I think JavaScript is probably the nicest of the big dynamic scripting languages (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby) to work with. There could definitely be improvements, but trash seems to be taking things too far.

> I think JavaScript is probably the nicest of the big dynamic scripting languages (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby) to work with. As an experienced Python programmer learning JavaScript, this isn’t true for me yet but I hope it becomes true. I think JS will be much more useful to me than Python. > Which is fairly easily banned with a linter. Any particular recommendations?

> Any particular recommendations?

TypeScript.

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#62

Post by blowski »

anoncake wrote: post #41
blowski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Finding flaws in a language doesn't mean the language is bad, just that it has... flaws. The proof that JS is actually pretty good is that it has been used to build so many things. Like the old adage about economics, these criticisms are taking something that works in practice and trying to see if it works in theory.

No. Popularity does not indicate quality. Judging the quality of something by its popularity is a form of cyclical reasoning. Especially when there is an obvious alternative explanation, namely that JS is the only language you can in the browser without transpiling and for a long time the only one period. While the fact JS can be used to build all these things puts a floor on its quality, that floor is uselessly low.

I'm not using popularity as the metric. "1 million identical websites were built with JavaScript" wouldn't say much beyond the first website.

But that there is a very broad range of successful applications partly relying on JavaScript for their success undercuts the idea that JavaScript is inherently rubbish. Whether it has some subjective "quality" is a conversation best left for art galleries.

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#63

Post by leoc »

wartijn_ wrote: post #32
onion2k wrote: post #19

0.2 + 0.1 === 0.3 That's not really a JS problem, that's a floating point problem. Plenty of languages will have the same issue. +!![] "" - - "" (null - 0) + "0" Calling these things weird is fair enough but I can't help thinking this is code you'd never actually write outside of the context of a "Look how weird JS is!" post. It's like picking examples from the Annual Obfuscated C Contest to show how hard it is to un…

The site does say so in the introduction > Even if you're a JS developer, most of this syntax is probably, and hopefully, not something you use in your daily life. So I think you should look at this site more as something fun you might not have known if you're an js developer than as criticism of js. That being said, the !!"" isn't that weird of a syntax is it? I see and use the double exclamation mark all the time.

> that weird of a syntax

ought to be "that weird a syntax": it's 'so [adjective] a [noun]' not 'so [adjective] of a [noun]'. It's 'so much of a syntax' but that's because 'much' is a determiner not an adjective, which really makes a much difference. Or if you want to be plain-spoken you can ofc just say 'such a weird syntax'.

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#65

Post by furstenheim »

ljm wrote: post #33
nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #3

> JavaScript is a great programming language, but ... Why are we so afraid to call trash "trash"? It's not attacking the creator, but just how can we make progress if things are not perceived as they are? https://wtfjs.com

Why is it trash? Or is this just like PHP where people are so accustomed to shitting on something that they're completely oblivious to the progress that's actually been made? I don't understand what this actually contributes to the discussion beyond it being a tired, beaten-down programming meme.

Yes, it's a pity that java applets have disappeared. Great UX, great development cycle, programming purity...

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#66

Post by hootbootscoot »

azangru wrote: post #20
nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #3

> JavaScript is a great programming language, but ... Why are we so afraid to call trash "trash"? It's not attacking the creator, but just how can we make progress if things are not perceived as they are? https://wtfjs.com

Is javascript any more "trash" than python or ruby? I don't think so.

Presuming server-side JS, as you won't run Ruby or Python in the browser, typically, you can say that all 3 dynamic languages, as such (garbage collected, heap-based, untyped) will waste computer resources and perform worse than typed compiled languages (even garbage-collected ones) due to memory usage patterns.

Python has an interesting C FFI interface, among other approaches, that can at least allow CPU and memory-bound tasks to be accomplished inside of a native code module. You see a lot of domain specific work in Python due to these approaches, cython, etc..

Crystal lang is what I would urge all Ruby devs to look at. (an LLVM-based compiled language that has HTTP in it's standard library, for one thing...I'd pit it against Go, for example.)

As I see large front-end teams frequently pushing JS from a typescript base lately, I'm not sure that even the JS community supports "everything JS" anymore. At the point one does backend Node.js work with typescript or other more rigidly typed systems, I have to wonder if targeting V8 is really the desired option any more, and if the programmer would not be better off switching to a high-performance and feature-complete typed backend language system. (the single-threaded JS execution model being a needless constraint at this point, for example. It's great as an event loop)

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#67

Post by kingludite »

blowski wrote: post #34
azangru wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is javascript any more "trash" than python or ruby? I don't think so.

From what I read on forums, every single piece of technology that's ever been invented is trash according to some self-appointed expert. I doubt I could name a programming language used by more than 100 people about which at least one person hasn't written a crtical comment.

Elixir?

I've never used it but reading about it I kept going ohh, ahhh and wow! In stead of my standard: ** ** *k * ** *sh?!?

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#68

Post by anoncake »

blowski wrote: post #62
anoncake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Popularity does not indicate quality. Judging the quality of something by its popularity is a form of cyclical reasoning. Especially when there is an obvious alternative explanation, namely that JS is the only language you can in the browser without transpiling and for a long time the only one period. While the fact JS can be used to build all these things puts a floor on its quality, that floor is uselessly low.

I'm not using popularity as the metric. "1 million identical websites were built with JavaScript" wouldn't say much beyond the first website. But that there is a very broad range of successful applications partly relying on JavaScript for their success undercuts the idea that JavaScript is inherently rubbish. Whether it has some subjective "quality" is a conversation best left for art galleries.

If you say JS is "pretty good" how is that not a statement about its quality?

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#69

Post by KMnO4 »

leoc wrote: post #63
wartijn_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site does say so in the introduction > Even if you're a JS developer, most of this syntax is probably, and hopefully, not something you use in your daily life. So I think you should look at this site more as something fun you might not have known if you're an js developer than as criticism of js. That being said, the !!"" isn't that weird of a syntax is it? I see and use the double exclamation mark all the time.

> that weird of a syntax ought to be "that weird a syntax": it's 'so [adjective] a [noun]' not 'so [adjective] of a [noun]'. It's 'so much of a syntax' but that's because 'much' is a determiner not an adjective, which really makes a much difference. Or if you want to be plain-spoken you can ofc just say 'such a weird syntax'.

English is as weird as JavaScript.

Re: JavaScript Is Weird

#70

Post by xingyzt »

nly wrote: post #51
onion2k wrote: post #19

0.2 + 0.1 === 0.3 That's not really a JS problem, that's a floating point problem. Plenty of languages will have the same issue. +!![] "" - - "" (null - 0) + "0" Calling these things weird is fair enough but I can't help thinking this is code you'd never actually write outside of the context of a "Look how weird JS is!" post. It's like picking examples from the Annual Obfuscated C Contest to show how hard it is to un…

> That's not really a JS problem, that's a floating point problem More accurately it's a binary problem. 0.1 and 0.3 have non-terminating representations in binary, so it's completely irrelevant whether you're using fixed or floating point. Any number that can be represented as the sum of powers of 2 and 5 have a terminating decimal representation, whereas only numbers that can be represented as the sum of powers of…

Floating bar numbers are an interesting way of giving terminating representations to more commonly used decimals. Each number is essentially a numerator and denominator pair, with some bits to indicate the position of the division bar separating them.

https://iquilezles.org/www/articles/floatingbar/floatingbar....

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