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Enough with the JavaScript already

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61–70 of 231 posts

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#61
post #50
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not however, preclude the possibility that the tool is in fact a bad tool, and that the tool is bizarrely the only tool we have. They say poorly skilled people blame their tools, and that highly skilled people who know their tools well, will know how to use it well. That being said, see that circular saw over there that will occasionally bounce and cut off its user's fingers? I'm not gonna use it, no matter h…

Yeah JavaScript has problems, so do all programming languages. JS has some particularly egregious ones, but the abuses and problems the slide complains about are not a symptom of a defect with JavaScript. They would be the same problems with any other language being used by incompetents.

It makes me shudder to think what things would be like if they hadn't included closures in Javascript. Things could have been a hell of a lot worse!

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#62
post #37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I rather use those 5 MB for my application.

Save 5 MB and condemn yourself/your team/your company to the hell of maintaining multiple code bases that all do basically the same thing but subtly different and written in different languages.

Sounds like a dumb ass decision.

It's the sort of logic that makes people pick C or C++ when a managed language would have been more appropriate.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yea…

Coming from a world of Java (Java SE of no particular platform and Android), I find the iOS documentation surprisingly hard to navigate. In the Java world, it's common for documentation on a class to contain at least a page of introductory material to the class including its purpose, its function, major caveats, some example code, etc. The iOS documentation splits all of that up between Getting Started articles, the class documentation, and separately-downloadable sample code projects. It's all there if you know where to look, but it's inconveniently spread out.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#64
post #47
post #40

JavaScript is a tool. Once it becomes trendy idiots will always abuse a tool. It's not JavaScript's fault people are bad at web design and development. If it wasn't fucked up JavaScript these people were contacting you about it'd be something else, be glad you have a job.

It does not however, preclude the possibility that the tool is in fact a bad tool, and that the tool is bizarrely the only tool we have. They say poorly skilled people blame their tools, and that highly skilled people who know their tools well, will know how to use it well. That being said, see that circular saw over there that will occasionally bounce and cut off its user's fingers? I'm not gonna use it, no matter h…

I agree that it's a bad tool in many ways, but even if the language (and environments) were beautiful, the problem at hand is often the way that people use it.

In this case, a poor craftsman uses his tools to do the things that the browser already does for you.

I've seen some JS that reinvents lots of what the browser rendering engine should handle (recalculating & reflowing heights of elements every time something was added or subtracted from the DOM, for example). Expand this kind of thinking to an entire project, and you start to find yourself in the kind of mess described in the slides.

If/when Dart replaces JS, some of the enforced structure may help prevent badly organized or buggy code, but it won't fix poor assumptions of what concerns scripting should and should not handle.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#65
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed Ghostery but did not set up any filters; with just that, it shows how much external resources / from which external parties things are loaded. Some sites have like twenty external dependencies, and multiple analytics gathering scripts (which may get embedded via the iframes of advertisers).

I work in advertising. I have seen Ghostery rack up close to 300 trackers before. Piggybacked pixels... they're everywhere

[deleted]

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#66

Javascript itself has warts and they are easily overcome. I've found that the biggest hurdle for me, someone who's written native desktop applications, are the libraries are a huge hurdle. I still don't understand the obsession with MV* "design patterns," in GUI code. It's made worse by the fact that the model we have to base our GUIs off of is a based on hierarchal documents.

Those bloated GUI libraries are part of the problem, in my opinion.

HTML is a great document definition language in the right hands but like JavaScript, its poor use can create a nightmare. You can fix this by learning to write clear and simple semantic HTML but if you have to work on legacy code that doesn't really help.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#67
post #47
post #40

JavaScript is a tool. Once it becomes trendy idiots will always abuse a tool. It's not JavaScript's fault people are bad at web design and development. If it wasn't fucked up JavaScript these people were contacting you about it'd be something else, be glad you have a job.

It does not however, preclude the possibility that the tool is in fact a bad tool, and that the tool is bizarrely the only tool we have. They say poorly skilled people blame their tools, and that highly skilled people who know their tools well, will know how to use it well. That being said, see that circular saw over there that will occasionally bounce and cut off its user's fingers? I'm not gonna use it, no matter h…

Fortunately, JS is not the only tool we have. JS is a relatively fine compile target, and with asm.js, a pretty fast one.

So pick your favorite among CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart, GorillaScript, Elm, ClojureScript, etc, or try compiling your favorite language using LLVM.

Let a compiler take care of all the numerous rough edges raw JS has.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#68
In every situation that you allow your engineers to develop for the technology instead of for their customers, this is going to occur.

Does the customer care that the latest MVVM JS tool is being used? Not unless your customers are only other developers. The customer cares about getting whatever widget you are selling them quickly and with as little thought as possible on their side to consume it.

Re: Enough with the JavaScript already

#69
post #62
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather use those 5 MB for my application.

Save 5 MB and condemn yourself/your team/your company to the hell of maintaining multiple code bases that all do basically the same thing but subtly different and written in different languages. Sounds like a dumb ass decision. It's the sort of logic that makes people pick C or C++ when a managed language would have been more appropriate.

Number 1 reason to uninstall applications on Play Store, executable size, Google IO 2013.

Plus Mono does not save you from writing multiple UI code anyway.

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