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JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

blogs.adobe.com

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Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#11

Post by _delirium »

marknutter wrote: post #2

This is more of a rant against dynamically typed languages than against javascript itself, and making the argument that dynamically typed languages are not suitable for large web apps is a difficult (not impossible) one to make. The author also complains about some javascript projects being split up into enough files, which is hardly a side-effect of using javascript. The author inherited what sounds like a pretty di…

Yeah, this doesn't add a whole lot to the debate imo. I'm vaguely sympathetic to the argument that languages with more/better static analysis are better for large-scale development, but that particular argument has a whole lot written about it, and is probably still inconclusive.

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#12

Post by zkirill »

jwoah12 wrote: post #3

As I read more of these arguments, it makes me think a lot about whether I should switch to CoffeeScript before my web app gets any larger. Has anyone switched to CS or another language that compiles to JS, and regretted it?

Overall, CoffeeScript has made JS development much more enjoyable for me. We had also integrated the compiler very nicely into our build script.

This resource has been invaluable: http://js2coffee.org/

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#13

Post by hellopat »

jwoah12 wrote: post #3

As I read more of these arguments, it makes me think a lot about whether I should switch to CoffeeScript before my web app gets any larger. Has anyone switched to CS or another language that compiles to JS, and regretted it?

I haven't used coffee script myself, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that wrote something in CoffeeScript and regretted it. The biggest arguments against using CoffeeScript (or any language that compiles to JavaScript) that I seem to keep hearing are:

1. JavaScript isn't a very readable language. (I think this is untrue. I've seen some incredibly well written / structured JS) 2. Not everyone knows CoffeeScript, so when you put a project up on GitHub and it's written in CoffeeScript, it's difficult for people who only know the syntax of native JS to understand what's going on. (To counter this - a lot of projects that are written in CoffeeScript are bundled with the compiled JS code as well - which also happens to be very readable IMHO).

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#14

Post by voidr »

This article only proves the author's incompetence to develop and maintain large JavaScript projects, nothing more.

> I don’t know why but JavaScript programmers tend to put all of their code into few files. That’s not so useful, though, if you want to have multiple developers work on the same project. Splitting up the code into multiple files enabled us to scale the project.

Let me rephrase that:

"I don’t know why but incompetent programmers tend to put all of their code into few files."

Last time I checked JavaScript does not have a file count limit.

The author should learn to talk in first person. I'm pretty sure I could write a horrible ActionScript app, if I wanted to, but that would not make ActionScript horrible in general.

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#16

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

marknutter wrote: post #2

This is more of a rant against dynamically typed languages than against javascript itself, and making the argument that dynamically typed languages are not suitable for large web apps is a difficult (not impossible) one to make. The author also complains about some javascript projects being split up into enough files, which is hardly a side-effect of using javascript. The author inherited what sounds like a pretty di…

And it's an Adobe blog. Their employees are quite likely to be biased in favour of their statically-typed variant, ActionScript 3 (well, it has a lot of changes, but it's essentially a JS variant at heart)

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#17

Post by Androsynth »

jwoah12 wrote: post #3

As I read more of these arguments, it makes me think a lot about whether I should switch to CoffeeScript before my web app gets any larger. Has anyone switched to CS or another language that compiles to JS, and regretted it?

doubtful. As a JS dev, I often find myself in situations where I wish I was working with CS instead.

However, this article isnt advocating CoffeeScript (well it is, but it doesnt actually make a case for it), its advocating using a statically typed language. CS gives you classes, but thats not a big deal (module pattern makes it trivial to implement classes in JS).

To scale your web app, the author is advocating writing your apps in Java, C# and actionscript.

Now that I think of it, this is a really poorly laid out argument. It spends most of the time arguing for static typing, then throws in CoffeeScript as a sop to the people who will flame him for advocating Java/C#/AS.

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#19

Post by joshontheweb »

jwoah12 wrote: post #3

As I read more of these arguments, it makes me think a lot about whether I should switch to CoffeeScript before my web app gets any larger. Has anyone switched to CS or another language that compiles to JS, and regretted it?

I haven't switched to coffeescript but I have worked on several coffeescript codebases. Its not the end of the world, but I don't prefer it. It is an unnecessary level of abstraction and is fragmenting js. It also seems the coffeescript users tend to use haml and sass as well. When I am working on those projects I feel like I am drowning in preprocessors and frequently encounter cryptic errors as a result.

Re: JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

#20

Post by kaonashi »

marknutter wrote: post #2

This is more of a rant against dynamically typed languages than against javascript itself, and making the argument that dynamically typed languages are not suitable for large web apps is a difficult (not impossible) one to make. The author also complains about some javascript projects being split up into enough files, which is hardly a side-effect of using javascript. The author inherited what sounds like a pretty di…

Dynamic typing isn't the problem; weak typing is the problem.
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