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For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

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Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#41

Post by gexla »

solomatov wrote: post #25
gexla wrote: post #22

It's interesting to see so many people say "JS is great and we used it to build X" on one side and people who hate JS on the other side. Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. I th…

>Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. People use JavaScript not because it's good but because it's the only option to develop in a browser. Having the same language on the client…

It depends on what you are building. Server side can cover so much ground these days. It could be the Ghost blogging app which was recently released or we could be talking about the muscle behind Google.

Node covers a lot of "good enough" space for what a lot of people are doing. The people who complain the loudest about Node are likely those who are working on things which aren't covered by that "good enough" circle.

I wish people would use real life project examples or include the sorts of work they do when they makes these kinds of arguments. It would help us see where this person is coming from.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#42

Post by solomatov »

sneak wrote: post #36
solomatov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. People use JavaScript not because it's good but because it's the only option to develop in a browser. Having the same language on the client…

> Having the same language on the client and the server is a very strong point Only if you're so incredibly strapped for cash that you can't hire real devs that can pick up another language in a day or two. Almost every language used commonly on the serverside is vastly preferable to js. This whole "well, it's THE SAME" benefit simply isn't. It's a red herring. I'm convinced the whole ecosystem has sprung up because…

>Only if you're so incredibly strapped for cash that you can't hire real devs that can pick up another language in a day or two.

If your application is more complex on the client than on the server, that's the way to go.

I personally, prefer GWT here. Java on the client and the server is much better than JavaScript on its place.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#43

Post by nbevans »

esamek wrote: post #18

For modern development of what ? Then don't use Javascript. I'm not sure I can really appreciate another rant about how one language, framework, pre–compiler, VM, etc is terrible and everyone should stop using it. Javascript's popularity has emerged organically. Its not because it has the best design. Its because it can get the job done and is browser based–and now server-side too. The browser is the next OS, the ult…

It's operating a defacto monopoly on a layer of the modern development stack. This does not make it "f'ing awesome".

People rant about JS not because it's shit, per se. Everybody knows that. They rant because they long for better languages that are available across all web browsers.

I would like to see a standardised CLR-style VM that allows language modules to be loaded as requested by a particular web page. Otherwise we'll just be replacing JS with what will probably be another old fashioned imperative language (see: Rust). We don't want that. We want freedom to use whatever language we want.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#44

Post by lmz »

pmelendez wrote: post #34
tomlu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many languages have prototypal inheritance, but most modern languages have first class functions these days. And what sane language uses dynamic scoping?

Do you mean lexical scope? Scheme has it and it is awesome. If you think it is not a good feature you should grab a SICP and see the magical stuff you can do with it.

He is asking what other sane language does not have lexical scope, as that was listed as one of JavaScript's advantages.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#45

Post by MatthewPhillips »

solomatov wrote: post #25
gexla wrote: post #22

It's interesting to see so many people say "JS is great and we used it to build X" on one side and people who hate JS on the other side. Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. I th…

>Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. People use JavaScript not because it's good but because it's the only option to develop in a browser. Having the same language on the client…

It's not the only option in the browser.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#46

Post by solomatov »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #45
solomatov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. People use JavaScript not because it's good but because it's the only option to develop in a browser. Having the same language on the client…

It's not the only option in the browser.

What are other runtime options?

- Flash? That's almost the same as JavaScript and it's getting obsolete.

- Java? No one enables it on the client, thanks to security problems.

- Asm.js/LLVM? These are immature and can't be used for production.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#47

Post by mattmanser »

drakaal wrote: post #17
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…

I see this all the time. JS is slow because of the dom. No. JS is slow because JS is slow. Yes, I know V8 makes it faster than it used to be. Yes I know it is neck and neck for computation, but because of the way memory is handled it is slow for loading large dictionaries. But I could forgive all of that. JavaScript is not well designed for work in a team environment, nor is it well designed for Large Code Bases. But…

They did start 5 years ago. You obviously weren't around for IE6. Man that js engine was sloooowwwwwwwwwwwww. Like several orders of magnitude compared to modern ones.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#48

Post by solomatov »

gexla wrote: post #41
solomatov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously Node (and JS) has some things that it is strong in. People use it to build those things. Good developers won't use a tool in their box which is inferior to another tool they can use effectively. In between, there is a lot of room for "good enough" where tools overlap. People use JavaScript not because it's good but because it's the only option to develop in a browser. Having the same language on the client…

It depends on what you are building. Server side can cover so much ground these days. It could be the Ghost blogging app which was recently released or we could be talking about the muscle behind Google. Node covers a lot of "good enough" space for what a lot of people are doing. The people who complain the loudest about Node are likely those who are working on things which aren't covered by that "good enough" circle…

>It depends on what you are building. Server side can cover so much ground these days. It could be the Ghost blogging app which was recently released or we could be talking about the muscle behind Google.

Consider for example a rich text editor, or diagram editor with a complicated automatic layout. Doing such things in JS is extremely painful.

Re: For modern development Javascript indeed is a shit language

#49

Post by rdtsc »

masklinn wrote: post #35
rdtsc wrote: post #11

Sadly I agree, you can just start with this: > [1,10,5,-15,-2,4].sort(); [-15,-2,1,10,4,5] And yes saying "oh but it is because it has weak types" doesn't excuse it, it is broken and that's that. Naming the brokeness with a label or showing why historically it is there, doesn't fix it. On the other hand they do have nice closure support, I do like some of that. But in large, the language makes me angry every time I h…

> And yes saying "oh but it is because it has dynamic types" doesn't excuse it It has nothing to do with dynamic types[0]. It has to do with > If compareFunction is not supplied, elements are sorted by converting them to strings and comparing strings in lexicographic[0] period end of the story. You might argue it's a shitty default, but please argue against reality, not what you (wrongly) believe it is. [0] this is t…

The correct answer is it has to do with weak types.

> `If compareFunction is not supplied, elements are sorted by converting them to strings and comparing strings in lexicographic` period end of the story.

As I said explaining the historical context or labeling the brokennes with something like "weak typing" doesn't excuse. It still stays broken.

> You might argue it's a shitty default, but please argue against reality, not what you (wrongly) believe it is.

Surprise, I know it is possible to eventually sort things in JS. I too have seen sorted tables in JS done entirely in JS. That's not the point. The point is, it is has fundamentally broken type system.

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