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Enough with the JavaScript already

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Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#21

Post by matwood »

weland wrote: post #18
cliveowen wrote: post #11

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,…

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…

Your best bet on Android is to download the source and use that as your documentation.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#22

Post by w1ntermute »

weland wrote: post #18
cliveowen wrote: post #11

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,…

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…

> Android is terribly documented and very messy to develop on.

I keep hearing this FUD, but I have no idea where it's coming from. I've never had any problems with the Android documentation. The most annoying part of Android development is probably Eclipse, but I'd rather have a resource intensive IDE that's cross platform than one that only runs on OS X.

In fact, the Android platform has some amazing opportunities for those who are willing to look past the mainstream views on it. Because it's ignored by so many companies/developers, all you have to do is pick an iOS app that is popular and clone it - you are pretty much guaranteed to get lots of users.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#23

Post by ycitm »

exizt88 wrote: post #15
cliveowen wrote: post #11

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,…

What's wrong with the DOM? (Sorry if this is a stupid question)

Crockford has some very interesting things to say about it:

http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/20/video-crockford-domtheory...

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#24

Post by chii »

cliveowen wrote: post #11

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,…

The mistake, perhaps, is that people (us) are trying to shoe horn an application into a Document object model - its in the name for christ sakes! Document! Not application object model!

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#25

Post by nbevans »

weixiyen wrote: post #16

2013 - 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.

"Objective-C and Java rule 2013 since web apps are not as pleasant to use on mobile."

Or with some MVVM, Xamarin and some C# or F#... write once, compile for all mobile platforms. Never having to once touch the nastiness of Obj-C or Java.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#26

Post by Slackwise »

chii wrote: post #24
cliveowen wrote: post #11

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,…

The mistake, perhaps, is that people (us) are trying to shoe horn an application into a Document object model - its in the name for christ sakes! Document! Not application object model!

Not just the DOM, HTTP as well. We're shoehorning state into a stateless system, and inventing new crap like WebSockets to overcome limitations of a system designed for document retrieval. The web has turned into the biggest hack ever.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#27

Post by 16s »

All the includes are insane as well. Run Noscript or any other JS blocker and visit a few big sites and you'll see that you end up running JS from half the Internet.

I'm joking of course, but some sites have dozens of includes from other sites, advertisers, CDNs, etc.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#28

Post by krosaen »

It's not really an either or thing. You can go too far with client side rendering. But progressive enhancement can only bring you so far in delivering an interactive experience - it's typical that his example is a simple tabs implementation - of course that's easy to do without much js.

That's why I like knockoutjs - it makes it easier to sprinkle in the data-bound rich interactive UI to the pieces of your page that need it and leave the rest as normal server side rendered content. It doesn't force you to go whole hog client side.

One key area of performance where js rendered UI helps a lot is in customizing an otherwise uniformly served (and cached) page. 95% of the page is uniform to everybody, so render that server side and cache the heck out of it (varnish or whatever). Then, bind the pieces of the UI after page load and customize them based on the user - their login status, their location, etc.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#29

Post by k-mcgrady »

w1ntermute wrote: post #22
weland wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Android is terribly documented and very messy to develop on. I keep hearing this FUD, but I have no idea where it's coming from. I've never had any problems with the Android documentation. The most annoying part of Android development is probably Eclipse, but I'd rather have a resource intensive IDE that's cross platform than one that only runs on OS X. In fact, the Android platform has some amazing opportunities f…

>> "The most annoying part of Android development is probably Eclipse"

Hopefully Android Studio[1] will be the solution to that problem.

>> "I keep hearing this FUD, but I have no idea where it's coming from. I've never had any problems with the Android documentation."

I don't think the Android documentation is bad but I find iOS documentation much better. It might just be because I'm more used to the iOS docs (5 years experience vs. 1 year on Android).

[1] http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#30

Post by PommeDeTerre »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #13
cliveowen wrote: post #11

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,…

Absolutely. Write in whatever language you like, compile to asm.js - that way you're running in the browser, at about half native speed.

Asm.js is not an alternative to JavaScript, though. It is JavaScript, just a really mangled and ugly subset of it.

cliveowen was clearly talking about "an alternative to Javascript" and "not [...] those things that eventually get translated to Javascript". Anything targeting Asm.js is merely targeting JavaScript.

The "half native speed" claim is quite dubious, at best. Even if it were realistic, that's still quite a horrible decrease in performance relative to native code. It's not as bad as the typically much worse disparity, but it's still not good at all.

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