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JavaScript at 20

brendaneich.github.io

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Re: JavaScript at 20

#321

Post by iyn »

stickperson wrote: post #173
iyn wrote: post #137

If you're interested in learning ES6 basics in 20 minutes, this is a great starting point: https://github.com/lukehoban/es6features Check out this repo, if you have a "little more" free time: https://github.com/ericdouglas/ES6-Learning To be honest, I used to dislike JS not so long ago - it was hard to debug, I had to use strange conventions to write OO code etc. But after learning more about the ES6, react/flux, nod…

What other resources did you use? I'm slowly working my way though Programming JavaScript Applications.

There is no a single site/book I use, I just search for a topic that I think is interesting. Fore example, lately I've been exploring Promises and asynchronous JS [0][1]. For understanding react & flux, you can watch 3-part series from SeattleJS [2]. This post is a good general roadmap: [3].

[0] https://www.promisejs.org

[1] https://promisesaplus.com/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd6Ub7Ju2RM

[3] https://medium.com/javascript-scene/learn-javascript-b631a4a...

Re: JavaScript at 20

#322

Post by general_failure »

thethimble wrote: post #169
nostrademons wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the best language is the most ubiquitous one. You can paper over syntactic annoyances and semantic confusion with a mental mind-shift, and once they do, they become barriers to entry for your competitors. You can't paper over an inability to deploy your software in front of a customer. From the POV of "what's a showstopper, vs. what's an annoyance", ubiquity is the most important feature a language can h…

Right. But that doesn't take away from the fact that JS has become ubiquitous strictly by accident. I think M8 is just expressing that frustration.

I think that's the norm in this world. Most things are ubiquitous by accident. Nobody planned it from the start.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#323

Post by knightofmars »

lorddoig wrote: post #257
knightofmars wrote: post #40

"Haters gonna hate." Anyone claiming that JS is the "worst thing to happen to the web" and/or that some other language would miraculously solve all of the problems present in JS should do the following, "Go create it." Don't whine about the barriers and how a new language would never be adopted because "JS is already everywhere." There are plenty of people already trying to solve this problem by actively doing someth…

Although your suggestion may be popular, it is, in fact, suboptimal. If one believes that "JS is the worst thing to happen to the web" and that "some other language would miraculously solve all of the problems" then going off into the wilderness to "create" is almost certainly a dead-end endeavour. A language is only one component of what's needed to replace JS - there's also winning over 4 major browser vendors who'…

There's a difference between spouting negative emotion filled complaints into the ether (or claiming things are "shit" or a "turd" on random hacker news comment boards) and positively engaging in a community to effect change. All of the statements you've made are just a more articulate re-hashing of the same facts that everyone knows. You're engaging in the same cycle of "Problem here! Barriers!" If everyone took the viewpoint you've described and extrapolated it into the rest of life nothing would ever be accomplished. Yet somehow, here we are flying around the world in a day and walking around with futuristic computer phones in our pockets. Just because you think the barriers are too large for you doesn't mean they're too large for everyone (and resources are something you accumulate, you don't wake up one morning with them at your beck and call).

"...but things never change." I think you're wrong. Things do change. They just don't change at a pace that is fast enough and obvious enough for someone who feels passionate about an issue (Gay rights, Women's rights, Black's rights, all civil rights crusades, anyone?) And it often takes a long time for people to realize they need to be actively engaged instead of complaining from the sidelines before any change occurs.

By all means, continue to grumble on comment boards, just don't act surprised or upset when the direction of the thing you were grumbling about doesn't go the way you want it to.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#324

Post by Joeri »

wwweston wrote: post #218
cmdrfred wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, python on the server and in the browser. What a world that would be.

> Man, python on the server and in the browser. What a world that would be. If you're going to imagine that as a utopian alternative to JS, be sure to be thorough about it and imagine 1995 Python dominating the browser landscape for years and then the advancement path the language has taken on the server playing out among several browsers. Then come back and tell everybody how much prettier it looks than JS (for bonu…

Don't forget about the burden this would have put on python's language designers to take into account the large amounts of already running code in websites. JavaScript was and remains tailor-made for running in browsers, which has allowed it to maintain near-perfect backwards compatibility for its primary use case without killing the language itself. It's probably a good thing that no other language was repurposed for web page scripting, as it would likely have effectively forked that language.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#325

Post by talmand »

BrendanEich wrote: post #269
talmand wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, taking 2 minutes to load and freezing the browser is a pretty good indicator of bad Javascript code.

Rather blame FF or some add-on, if you have to guess. Mark Dalgleish's bespoke framework is tiny. The images are not, so maybe blame your ISP? Dunno, not guessing, but JS is last on the blame-guess list.

Don't get me wrong. I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm just responding to the accusation as if Javascript is the known culprit. In those cases, chances are the code itself is the problem and not the language. I can code a page that will likely hang the browser but that doesn't mean I don't take the responsibility of the code that I wrote.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#326

Post by Guvante »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #254
Guvante wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have all of the optimizations available to the lowest level you are restricted which is why people complain about "only JS". There are no optimizations missing from x86 so complaining about it is pointless. Especially given the improvements in sandboxing having a more powerful underlying language could improve things (note that this doesn't mean it needs access to the API of the underlying OS, which is whe…

> Unless you have all of the optimizations available to the lowest level you are restricted which is why people complain about "only JS". > There are no optimizations missing from x86 so complaining about it is pointless. Not true. x86 is a high-level language and modern x86 CPUs do a lot of fancy stuff behind-the-scenes to try and make code run better.

Unless there exists a way to peel back that layer it is immaterial. Asking for something that doesn't exist is different than asking to have access to a layer that does exist.
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