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JavaScript is Good, Actually

ashfurrow.com

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Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#181

Post by viraptor »

dx034 wrote: post #159
aldanor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is also really slow 1) In scientific/ML CPython libraries, most critical parts are compiled anyway, and the core language is fast and expressive enough to provide a nice and fast interface to it; so your statement makes little sense without more context 2) Python != CPython

While I use Python for ML myself, I find it weird to say that a language isn't slow because you don't really use it anyway. It's true that Scripts in Python can be fast if 99% of the executed logic is in C anyway but that doesn't mean the language isn't slow. As soon as your Python script needs to do anything not available in a library you'll notice how slow it really is. Python is really neat to quickly experiment p…

As parent mentioned, python!=cpython. You've got pypy, cython, typed cython, nuitka, and probably some others I forgot about. Without knowing what you're trying to achieve and what you've tried, "extremely slow" is pretty hard to accept.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#182

Post by yakubin »

rusk wrote: post #177
tromp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think of Haskell as a great language. It still has its warts (e.g. last [0,1/3..2] > 2), but if you wan't wart free, there's probably nothing beyond lambda calculus. Being the closest thing to lambda calculus with enough syntactic sugar on top to make it practical is a large part of what makes Haskell great.

Haskell was the first thing that came to mind. I can show with one hand, by joining my pointer-finger and thumb, the number of people I know that use it. It looks lovely, and it's something I'd very much like to learn some day but I can't for the life of me think of what I would use it for. Are there any killer apps out there for it? At least with lisp, I can configure emacs ...

Pandoc and Xmonad are written in Haskell.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#183

Post by bartread »

mjburgess wrote: post #109
rusk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could mean that they see themselves as competing in a global marketplace. That they don't rely on geography and are quite happy to be ranked against the best of them. Not necessarily ranked highly but content to compete based on productivity and quality of work alone. Probably not what they meant though :)

The Leica selfie in the header says everything that needs to be said.

I can't be absolutely sure what you mean by this comment, but it feels like a needlessly personal attack.

FWIW, I don't really approve of the self-description of "world class software developer", either because (i) I'm not really sure what it means, but (ii) it sounds a bit pretentious. Still, it doesn't really relate to the quality or validity (or otherwise) of the post.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#184

Post by mschuetz »

worldsayshi wrote: post #5

Switching back to Java after having spent a long time in JavaScript land with modern standards made me realize how great JavaScript had become. The biggest reason for JavaScripts greatness to me is JSON. I couldn't understand how Java developers put up with such bulky ways to deal with data. After some time in Java land I've come back to appreciating its strengths again though. Code completion is nice. I'm kind of ho…

I'm still bitter about JSON not supporting comments.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#185

Post by bgorman »

kuon wrote: post #175

I have been working with elm for 2 years now and shipped 4 projects. I can say a lot of good thing about elm, but the most important one, and something that outweight a lot of thing is maintainability. Each time I had to change something in a shipped app it was painless, stressless (I know I won't add regression) and fast. I won't say JS is bad, but the absence of a compiler makes it much more fragile, especially whe…

Almost everyone writing JavaScript these days uses a compiler like Babel, webpack, browserfy etc..

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#186

Post by hn0 »

Forced OOP model [1], lack of types, highly redundant syntax (ES6 whyyyy). After years I’m still fighting with the language, not to mention the browser with it’s frankensteinian api.

Browsers should have just created a Lua dialect, which is like a more sane version of JS, and throw JS back into the nineties-fads hellscape that spawned it. Perhaps in an alternate dimension Eich will have done a non experimental port of Scheme or would just have done WASM from the start. I’m pretty sure at least there every PC would just boot into Netscape by now.

It’s true that the infrastructure around JS has gotten a lot better, but that’s despite the language. If anything I should thank it for popularizing FP which will hopefully eventually slay the chimera that is OOP.

[1] Or, more specifically, “POOP” to emphasise its prototypical nature.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#187

Post by 3pt14159 »

tejinderss wrote: post #83
collyw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "world-class software developer" even mean anything other than a big ego?

Given his github profile, I think we can give him credibility that he is pretty good. https://github.com/ashfurrow

I've worked with him five or six years ago and he was very productive and smart even then. People on HN need to relax and dial down the harshness of their criticism.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#188

Post by mkirklions »

wruza wrote: post #39

Semantics and configurability is what what makes a language great. JS doesn’t have function environments, i.e. every unlexical lookup goes to global/window and that cannot be redirected. It doesn’t have green threads (at least). There are generators, but one cannot just yield without marking all the functions generators too (async/await in modern terms). Stack traces are lost when generators throw(). JS has no good i…

I have done javascript programming, but after reading this I dont feel like I know anything.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#189

Post by JPKab »

tromp wrote: post #98
anton-107 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible I'm wondering what would be an example of a great language? Because we know that there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses

I like to think of Haskell as a great language. It still has its warts (e.g. last [0,1/3..2] > 2), but if you wan't wart free, there's probably nothing beyond lambda calculus. Being the closest thing to lambda calculus with enough syntactic sugar on top to make it practical is a large part of what makes Haskell great.

I love functional programming, but nobody use Haskell. Clojure, yeah.

Guy next to me at work was trying to build a web app with haskell for a hackathon, and I was blown away by how little the community had to offer for basic things he couldn't get working.

So yeah, languages people complain about, and ones nobody uses.

Re: JavaScript is Good, Actually

#190

Post by amelius »

hueving wrote: post #162
amelius wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python syntax is built around indentation. Try to properly indent a function that you pass to another function. And what if you have to pass two such functions? Where do you place the comma that separates both arguments?

You pass functions just like any other argument. clos = 42 def foo(x): return x + clos def bar(y): return y * clos higher_order(foo, bar) What's so hard about that?

Here's a challenge: try inlining the foo and bar in the call (because this is how functions are typically composed in functional programming)

You could do this with a lambda construct in Python; but this only works if the function has a single expression-statement; it doesn't work e.g. when you have a bunch of assignments inside the function you are inlining.

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