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What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

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Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#101

Post by agumonkey »

tabtab wrote: post #51
aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

Re: It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. And STILL doesn't, at least for anything non-trivial. New browser brands or version often "break" a lot of libraries and code. It's not really JS's fault: HTML wasn't meant to be emulate real desktops, and shoehorning it to do so has made a giant tangled multi-layer mess. Browser standards should be split into three focus areas…

I used to think so, but with reactive components and css layout like grid, you have enough clear paths for most use. This dom thing seems like it's here to stay for a few decades more.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#102

Post by agumonkey »

wslh wrote: post #67

JavaScript was used for very simple things when it was launched. Most pages used it for modifying button images when you hover or press a button, and for handling some web form operations. As others say JavaScript was very confusing, a programming language that was launched with Java in its name and to fill gaps in HTML limitations but there was no clear direction towards web app programming. Another confusing aspect…

I remember macromedia Dreamweaver magic rollover templates.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#103

Post by agumonkey »

btilly wrote: post #34

JavaScript is a fascinating example of Microsoft successfully getting a giant own goal. The promise of the web was cross platform applications that required no installation. Microsoft's fear was that cross platform applications would make the operating system irrelevant and reduce Windows lock-in. Both Sun (with Java) and Netscape wanted Microsoft's worst fears to happen. This was the era of Embrace-Extend-Extinguish…

game is not over, MS has typescript momentum now

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#104

Post by wslh »

egypturnash wrote: post #79
wslh wrote: post #67

JavaScript was used for very simple things when it was launched. Most pages used it for modifying button images when you hover or press a button, and for handling some web form operations. As others say JavaScript was very confusing, a programming language that was launched with Java in its name and to fill gaps in HTML limitations but there was no clear direction towards web app programming. Another confusing aspect…

Actionscript 1: a simple little language that could only be entered via a huge dropdown menu Actionscript 2: basically Javascript, when I was writing stuff in AS2 my O'Riley pocket JS guide saw a lot more use than the pocket AS guide. Actionscript 3: completely ECMAScript4, Macromedia/Adobe was on the standards board for that, but then Mozilla went a different way, I think, it is a giant mess [1]. Also AS3 was a lot…

In conjuntion with AS Flash offered animation capabilities that were impossible at the time. This animations are from 2000: http://swain.webframe.org/zeek.html

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#105

Post by danShumway »

SoylentOrange wrote: post #76

The article conflates “popular” with “loved”. JS is popular because it’s the only* language in which it’s possible to write browser apps and extensions. The number of people using transpilers for this purpose is minimal. In actual fact, most people try to avoid JS whenever possible, instead using TS or other languages that compile down to JS. Saying people love JavaScript because it’s the most popular is like saying…

> In actual fact, most people try to avoid JS whenever possible

Eh... if this was actually true, the web would look very different. I just can't square "web programmers hate Javascript" with "web programmers are obsessed with SPAs/CSS-in-JS/NodeJS backends/etc..."

> Writing in other languages still means transpiling to JS in the end

I'm assuming you already know about WASM, but if you don't, the future is starting to look relatively optimistic for other languages on the web. Still some problems to solve, but C++/Rust already have pretty promising toolchains working today.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#106

Post by unreal37 »

reflectiv wrote: post #10
aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

Complex javascript apps just weren't a thing...hell, it took google writing Gmail (2004) to really show everyone that a large SPA using javascript was even possible. After Gmail...things really started to move in the javascript world...people started to put effort into both the runtimes and the libraries.

"Complex javascript apps just weren't a thing"

I don't know what you were doing in 1995 and 1996, but I was building Javascript apps. They were "a thing" for me at least.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#107

Post by asveikau »

karatestomp wrote: post #26
asveikau wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, I think. We're a minority though. I'm giving deference to the new normal.

My love of a paycheck drives me to give deference to the new normal. Meanwhile real desktop programs are still way more pleasant to use and way more respectful of my system resources, and low- or no-JS websites are still mostly nicer to use and better performing than JS heavy ones.

> and low- or no-JS websites are still mostly nicer to use and better performing than JS heavy ones.

I dunno, there are some pretty egregious examples of this being false though. gmail is one such example. I remember using webmail in the days where every action was a full page load -- and we had slower connections then too, which made it hurt even more. Then gmail came out and blew everybody away with its response times. A well thought out AJAX solution could give you minimal load times for data. The issue lately is when the JS code is too big, not well tuned, and gives the equivalent of several 90s-era-website-full-pageloads worth of data with every action. That is to say a lot of websites aren't as lean as they could be.

I'm not a web focused person so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, this is my outsider's perspective.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#110

Post by shados »

aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

I remember dealing with JS early on the same way I deal with bash today. With all the weird apis no one understood at the time, limited internet resources (and even books at first), it was just a crazy quest to hunt someone who knew what to do, copy it, and try to tweak it (usually unsuccessfully) until something kind of sortoff does what you want.
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