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JavaScript at 20

brendaneich.github.io

11–20 of 327 posts

Re: JavaScript at 20

#11
post #8

I just wish the best language would win, not the accidentally ubiquitous one. And giving a real choice of language would been even better.

But there is no "best language", that's the problem. Compiling down to JS/asm.js is about as good as we'll get, realistically.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#14
post #11
post #8

I just wish the best language would win, not the accidentally ubiquitous one. And giving a real choice of language would been even better.

But there is no "best language", that's the problem. Compiling down to JS/asm.js is about as good as we'll get, realistically.

JavaScript is further from an ideal language than many out there.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#15
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is no "best language", that's the problem. Compiling down to JS/asm.js is about as good as we'll get, realistically.

JavaScript is further from an ideal language than many out there.

It isn't, because there is no ideal language.

Seriously. Even if there was the goalposts would keep moving anyway as things like functional programming get more popular.

My ideal language is one that I can use as often as possible in as many different contexts as possible. JavaScript is alright for that.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#16
So good to see String.prototype.startsWith and String.prototype.endsWith in ES6. I've ended up implementing these in too many projects. I look forward to using these in 2020 or 5 years after that, when IE 8 finally sunsets. (I joke of course, since you can use ES6 to 5 with IE 8 caveats with the modern taskrunners).

EDIT: Blockscope... what? More than a few of these changes point to JS being a functional version of PHP, but doesn't blockscope just fundamentally change the language?

Re: JavaScript at 20

#17
"Always bet on JS" is complete nonsense: http://brendaneich.github.io/ModernWeb.tw-2015/#74

It does those things poorly, and at great expense.

Eich did one thing, in 10 days, that was market positioned such that it became ubiquitous, and he's been banging that drum ever since -- to everyone's detriment, given how much power over technical direction he wielded at Mozilla, and how much impact Mozilla had on the web pre-Chrome.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#18
I wish JavaScript "committed a teenager suicide" and we finally got a more sane language for the web. It's startling how much energy is spent to work around its bad design every day and it's not getting any better, people are just getting used to it (which is akin to voluntarily agree with having most of one's brain blown off). Even seeing Brendan showing off that he hacked the language in 10 days makes me sick to the stomach...

Re: JavaScript at 20

#19

Cool presentation, but holy shit, taking ~2 minutes to load on FF and freezing the browser is not.

Anecdote, but I've got 30 tabs open in Chrome and I'm using a Macbook Pro that's over 7 years old and it loads in less than 3 seconds.

Also, I can open it in Lynx. The un-alt'd images mean there's a bit of inaccessible content, but it's actually more or less coherent, which might be useful to those whose machines are struggling with the content or even (potentially) to those rendering opinions on whether the web just sucks.

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