JavaScript is not suitable for large web apps

Some pretty woeful logic in this article.

To illustrate his point let me show you my cross-compiled and optimized JavaScript code of SpriteExample, which is included in Adobe’s online documentation about the Sprite class. As you can see the JavaScript code is extremely dense and no longer readable.

This links to http://jsfiddle.net/bparadie/cbU2X/

This contains some minified JavaScript... Of course it looks dense & no longer readable. Run the ActionScript Sprite class through gzip compression and I'm sure it'd look funky too.

The author also advocates the use of CoffeeScript - which would have the vast (all?) of the same complaints he's raised against JavaScript.

All in all, a pretty terrible article.

I know exactly why they do it- to cut down on HTTP requests. But then it's trivial to minify and compact your JS into a single file. It sounds like he's just worked on bad projects.

I switched to CoffeeScript and continue to use it for 90% of my projects. CS shines in the application domain, but don't use it when writing modules or a complicated application where you'll be debugging lots of logic errors.

Obviously there may be different requirements in different contexts, but I don't understand why anyone writes large web apps entirely in one language.

I, too, once believed the mantras that "multiple languages present a maintenance nightmare" and "it's better to keep a common language for the sake of acquiring new hires" and on and on... But after some years, I disagree with that rationale.

In my experience, it's been more productive to have some sort of service-oriented architecture, built around your preferred protocol and data format. Then you can choose the languages that best suit your project needs (a decision most often based on the best available libraries). Popular languages are very similar, and it's easy to cruise between them...

I recognize the need to strike some balance in an organization. You don't want 50 services each in some emerging/obscure language, but I think that most folks (at least those who frequent this site) are savvy enough to know when you've hit that threshold. In our organization, we have developers who are globally distributed, and we write services in a variety of languages. We tend to standardize on the JVM: Java, Clojure, Groovy, but we've got some C# services, a lot of XSL, PowerBuilder (yuck), and even VB. I typically have discretion to use the language of my choice.

ASIDE: I always emphasize the "script" in JavaScript and rarely use it in any type of OOP style (except for the occasional lightweight library); the examples in the OP link made me cringe.

There's no contradiction in saying don't use javascript, use something that compiles to javascript. It's exactly the same as saying don't use C, use something that translates to C (i.e. C++ once). As for his example being anecdotal, almost all code snippets posted in a blog post can be attacked for that, and while it might be valid, it is pretty much impossible for the writer to give _any_ negative example without it being dismissed as "bad code is bad code" etc.