For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#1

Post by CmonDev » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:02 AM UTC

For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language
live.julik.nl

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#2

Post by k__ » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:12 AM UTC

Is Dart an alternative for those problems?

Edit: I mean stuff like "callback hell", does it allow me to programm normally and still avoid blocking the loop?

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#3

Post by gkoberger » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:30 AM UTC

Personally, I disagree. I find JavaScript to be the most "write-able" language, and switching to Node + frontend JS as my main language (I've done Python, Ruby, PHP, Java and C++ as jobs) has been the best thing I've done in a long time. Express and Angular are amazing.

Sure, it has a bunch of quirks. Sure, it's not good for everything (I do mostly relatively simple CRUD apps). Sure, in the browser, it gets slow when the DOM is involved. Sure, this is hardly a rebuttal of the points in the original article.

But, still, I love JavaScript.

I think the problem is that the author is writing JavaScript as though it's Ruby. A JS developer switching to Ruby would have similar problems.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#4

Post by tluyben2 » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:36 AM UTC

No matter if I agree with this or not; why the stab at Java there? I'm not sure what the resemblance, besides the name, is here? Or does OP just dislike Java (for some completely different reason) and could it just have as well been Perl or PHP or whatever a lot of people don't like?

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#5

Post by Kiro » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:38 AM UTC

I'm very glad JavaScript is the language of the web. It has a combination of things I like that I don't find in many other languages:

* lexical scope

* first-class functions

* prototypal inheritance

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#6

Post by me_bx » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:39 AM UTC

Aren't all these rants about programming languages as sterile as debating whether Spanish language sucks because it is not as regular as Italian language ? I really don't get it, people keep attacking issues of javascript or php. Fact is: 1) people use the languages of their choice to make programs. 2) Programs work, no matter as shitty the program is reputed to be 3) why look further ?

My view is: instead of ranting about languages (think about the meaning of that word), why not instead dissect what we do with them: programs, and find ways to improve them ?

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#7

Post by Peaker » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:40 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #3

Personally, I disagree. I find JavaScript to be the most "write-able" language, and switching to Node + frontend JS as my main language (I've done Python, Ruby, PHP, Java and C++ as jobs) has been the best thing I've done in a long time. Express and Angular are amazing. Sure, it has a bunch of quirks. Sure, it's not good for everything (I do mostly relatively simple CRUD apps). Sure, in the browser, it gets slow when…

How do you handle Javascript ignoring wrong numbers of function arguments? Do you use a linter to catch this sort of thing?

This part of Javascript sounds the most absolutely insane to me: Silencing an error like that is catastrophic.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#8

Post by NKCSS » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:40 AM UTC

I don't get the "Fobjects are unusable for type systems since an object does not carry any type information."

You can just do

   if(myObjectToTest instanceof typeOfObjectIExpect)

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#9

Post by Peaker » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:40 AM UTC

me_bx wrote: post #6

Aren't all these rants about programming languages as sterile as debating whether Spanish language sucks because it is not as regular as Italian language ? I really don't get it, people keep attacking issues of javascript or php. Fact is: 1) people use the languages of their choice to make programs. 2) Programs work, no matter as shitty the program is reputed to be 3) why look further ? My view is: instead of ranting…

> why not instead dissect what we do with them: programs, and find ways to improve them ?

The way to improve a lot of programs is to write them in a different language.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#10

Post by jashkenas » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 10:41 AM UTC

Despite most of the points in this post being debatable — there's one bit that caught my eye:

    "Being nice will not help it, and CoffeeScript is not radical enough."

As the guy who started CoffeeScript, I agree. It's an intentionally very conservative approach. But there's more than one good way to skin the JavaScript cat. I think it would be fun to take another run at the same problem — attempt to find a minimal, readable, and easier-to-learn language that fits in the same role as JavaScript — but to do so with a much more radical design. Whereas previously such a thing would have been unusable in practice, having good sourcemap support in most browsers these days makes it viable, perhaps. I've been playing around with it a bit...