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The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

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Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#11

Post by jdw64 »

JS became a compilation target (and it really did), and back then in the video it was asm.js (that's been deprecated, hasn't it?), but then WebAssembly came along... Seeing it actually being implemented and running natively, it seems his prediction was accurate. I mainly use TypeScript myself, and now with Electron, web technologies are wrapped into desktop apps, so web syntax has even entered computer programs. People say Electron is heavy and not great, but it's also the fastest way to support Mac, Windows, and Linux all at once. Sometimes insights like that are surprising.

The 'death' being discussed here means that JavaScript becomes the substrate, a state where you don't use it directly, but it's everywhere. And that has truly come to pass.

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#12

Post by comrade1234 »

Surac wrote: post #5

My first contact with js was trying to make a button change its color on mouseover. There was no css back then. I bought a book and was so put off from the syntax that i never looked back to js from that day on. Never regretted my decision

I kind of like real JavaScript with prototype inheritance. It's not how we use it in browsers though.

And now with typescript and running it in the server... I'd rather just use Java.

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#13

Post by varun_ch »

jazz9k wrote: post #4
RIshabh235 wrote: post #2

We’re past the halfway point of Bernhardt’s 2035 timeline; JavaScript hasn’t died yet, but it’s clearly writing its own eulogy in WebAssembly.

I review many sites/month from different clients. They are all using some form of JavaScript. It's like PHP, it will never die.

It’s also relevant that LLMs have so much JavaScript training data that I don’t see a world where we’re not still using JavaScript.

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#14

Post by lezojeda »

jazz9k wrote: post #4
RIshabh235 wrote: post #2

We’re past the halfway point of Bernhardt’s 2035 timeline; JavaScript hasn’t died yet, but it’s clearly writing its own eulogy in WebAssembly.

I review many sites/month from different clients. They are all using some form of JavaScript. It's like PHP, it will never die.

[dead]

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#15

Post by matt_kantor »

jazz9k wrote: post #4
RIshabh235 wrote: post #2

We’re past the halfway point of Bernhardt’s 2035 timeline; JavaScript hasn’t died yet, but it’s clearly writing its own eulogy in WebAssembly.

I review many sites/month from different clients. They are all using some form of JavaScript. It's like PHP, it will never die.

> It's like PHP, it will never die.

I predict that PHP will live a long life, but not as long as C, and I predict JavaScript will have a lifespan closer to C's than PHP's.

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#17

Post by inigyou »

fishfasell wrote: post #6
jazz9k wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I review many sites/month from different clients. They are all using some form of JavaScript. It's like PHP, it will never die.

The JS death and AI bubble are two events I keep hearing about but will never come.

The AI bubble is now, maybe you mean the AI bubble pop

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#18

Post by _the_inflator »

jdw64 wrote: post #11

JS became a compilation target (and it really did), and back then in the video it was asm.js (that's been deprecated, hasn't it?), but then WebAssembly came along... Seeing it actually being implemented and running natively, it seems his prediction was accurate. I mainly use TypeScript myself, and now with Electron, web technologies are wrapped into desktop apps, so web syntax has even entered computer programs. Peop…

JavaScript is the new assembler layer so to say. Every compiler as per definition translates human readable code into machine language.

The benefit of JavaScript is, that, after Google really pushed it to its limit with V8 and of course NodeJS made it a backend dream, that it is ubiquitous and once written usable everywhere, much kinda like PDF.

Its versatility gave it the advantage over WebAssembly to this day, because it is not as widespread available as JavaScript.

I agree with you, that JavaScript itself is nowadays tantamount with TypeScript - what a giant leap this has been. Angular (2) was the unsung hero here. Angular was harshly criticized when they went TypeScript right from the beginning while still offering a native JavaScript version as well (which was basically unusable to be honest).

It is funny, that the last hideout not featuring TS as their default option is React, while more and more major integral projects like NextJS rely out of the box on TS. ReactJS will fall, too. It wouldn't be the first time regarding innovations coming from other projects. Again Angular is leading the innovation while ReactJS is a follower.

You rarely can go wrong with JavaScript and Python, I would say.

Re: The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

#20

Post by frail_figure »

jdw64 wrote: post #11

JS became a compilation target (and it really did), and back then in the video it was asm.js (that's been deprecated, hasn't it?), but then WebAssembly came along... Seeing it actually being implemented and running natively, it seems his prediction was accurate. I mainly use TypeScript myself, and now with Electron, web technologies are wrapped into desktop apps, so web syntax has even entered computer programs. Peop…

> but it's also the fastest way to support Mac, Windows, and Linux all at once.

Flutter exists too, and supports iOS and Android in addition to the desktop OSes. The dev time is pretty fast too imo.

That said, idk how the performance compares to Electron or Native apps.

As a small team, optimizing for "actually getting the thing shipped" is so much better than optimizing for speed anyway.

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