I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps, which isn't a bad prospect if you can afford to develop and iterate for two different leading platforms.
Enough with the JavaScript already
11–20 of 231 posts
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#12Why store state in DOM? Isn't that bad practice? I remember reading DOM access is the slowest part of JS [needs verification]. So you want to trade performance for few dozen kilobytes of assets that can be cached?
I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about, however mobile phones have awful bandwidth and awful browsers with not enough memory to cache everything they can.
In the context of websites, you also want the experience of new users to be the best it can be.
Basically, caching is nice, but it only works efficiently for applications that users visit often and that don't rely on links going viral, such as GMail. However, if you rely on caching for providing an acceptable user experience in cases where you rely on links going viral (such as Twitter), then you're screwed. Twitter has a mobile optimized web page that's much, much lighter than their desktop version and they did it for a good reason ;-)
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#13I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
Absolutely. Write in whatever language you like, compile to asm.js - that way you're running in the browser, at about half native speed.
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#14I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
Absolutely. Write in whatever language you like, compile to asm.js - that way you're running in the browser, at about half native speed.
__at about half native speed.__
Which may well the right trade off for many apps.
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#15I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
What's wrong with the DOM? (Sorry if this is a stupid question)
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#162013 - I stopped paying attention to every new framework or MV-whatever that comes out. What matters is the product and end user experience, and every single decision on how to go about making that product should be made with that thought in mind.
For me, it's not even javascript anymore. Objective-C and Java rule 2013 since web apps are not as pleasant to use on mobile.
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#17I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
Dart ( http://www.dartlang.org ) is a attempt by Google. Of course, probably no browser except Chrome (and Opera?) will ever have the Dart VM built-in, but Dart also compiles to javascript for those other browsers.
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#18I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
Objective-C is really nice. I don't like Apple, but their development tools are actually fairly good, and the whole API in iOS is, if not necessarily a beautiful piece of engineering (which is subjective), at least thoroughly-documented and easy enough to learn and use. Android is terribly documented and very messy to develop on.
But yeah, it sucks that you can't do cross-platform development unless you like to be tied to a web platforms, which tends to result in inferior user experience.
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#19I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
Objective-C is really nice. I don't like Apple, but their development tools are actually fairly good, and the whole API in iOS is, if not necessarily a beautiful piece of engineering (which is subjective), at least thoroughly-documented and easy enough to learn and use. Android is terribly documented and very messy to develop on. But yeah, it sucks that you can't do cross-platform development unless you like to be ti…
http://www.xamarin.com compiles C# to native apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
Re: Enough with the JavaScript already
#20I wonder if there'll ever be an alternative to Javascript. I'm not talking about those things that eventually get translated to Javascript, I'm talking about a native platform well thought-through and based on a typed language that isn't a mess. Yeah, I know: it's not Javascript that's broken, it's the DOM. I'd argue that both should be replaced by something else, otherwise the future will be 90% native mobile apps,…
What's wrong with the DOM? (Sorry if this is a stupid question)
Nothing wrong. But i guess DOM manipulation can be painfull sometimes. But if you are going to develop a web app you'll have to use the dom.