The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012 • Hacker News Board

Re: The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012

#21

Post by chrsstrm » Wed, Jan 09, 2013, 9:41 AM UTC

chubot wrote: post #10

Someone else posted this another thread and I agree: any methodology that determines that JavaScript is "treading water" is suspect. Even if you ignore JS on the server side, I would be very surprised if its importance and use was not increasing pretty rapidly.

The article says those figures were from Google Trends, which tracks searches on certain keywords. It failed to mention if this was explicitly for "javascript" or if it included other keyword variations as well. Add in searches for jQuery and the names of any popular library or MV* framework and I would bet you see a much different story.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012

#22

Post by lmm » Wed, Jan 09, 2013, 9:53 AM UTC

azakai wrote: post #7

wmat wrote: post #4

Does anyone else see a lucrative consulting opportunity in declining languages? I know a LOT of people still writing COBOL for a very good living, so who's to say in 10-15 years you won't be re-factoring enterprise Java in the same way. Of course, you might want to just kill yourself first.

There's nothing wrong with writing COBOL. It isn't new and shiny, but is that all everyone looks for in a job?

I look for enjoyment, which involves a lot of things, but feeling that I'm doing something constructive is a big part of that, and when I spend days trying to write something that I could do in two minutes (or wouldn't be necessary at all) in a better language it gets very demoralizing.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012

#23

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Jan 09, 2013, 11:10 AM UTC

chubot wrote: post #10

Someone else posted this another thread and I agree: any methodology that determines that JavaScript is "treading water" is suspect. Even if you ignore JS on the server side, I would be very surprised if its importance and use was not increasing pretty rapidly.

Why, if we ignore it on the server, would it be increasing suddenly?

Nothing's changed. Only node.js is new.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012

#24

Post by d0mine » Wed, Jan 09, 2013, 3:45 PM UTC

krichman wrote: post #16

Kilimanjaro wrote: post #2

"Out of the ~250 programs I wrote last year, 2-3 would have benefited from being written in a functional style." Donald Knuth

One of the things Knuth is famous for is writing a lengthy program for word counts that was equivalent to no more than 6 lines of shell script. I highly doubt that he's wrong regarding his own programs, but it's most certainly wrong for the majority of programmers. PS if we're going to appeal to authority, Church and Lambda Calculus were there first.

Discussion of the word count problem Knuth vs. McIlroy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304696

Re: The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012

#25

Post by chubot » Wed, Jan 09, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #23

chubot wrote: post #10

Someone else posted this another thread and I agree: any methodology that determines that JavaScript is "treading water" is suspect. Even if you ignore JS on the server side, I would be very surprised if its importance and use was not increasing pretty rapidly.

Why, if we ignore it on the server, would it be increasing suddenly? Nothing's changed. Only node.js is new.

It's not increasing suddenly -- it's been increasing for the last 5+ years. Or really increasing for the last 15 years continuously, but in the last 5 years it's gotten a boost with new libraries and so forth, fast Chrome enabling rich experiences, etc. JavaScript is just being used for more and more things, and there are more of the things that it has always been used for.

To say it's "treading water" means it was flat between 2011 and 2012, which I don't think is true.