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Dear JavaScript

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Re: Dear JavaScript

#211

Post by joshmanders »

algesten wrote: post #206
ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better approach is to spin off a new system and give it a new name Great point. I think some developers or teams feel compelled to update the latest even if they are happy with what they have because using an older version number gives the appearance of being behind the standards and practices. In a case where changes take place to the extent that it makes the previous framework difficult to recognize or breaks com…

Remember this behaviour is encouraged by the deprecation warning notices of npm. I want my project to compile cleanly, but without me changing anything, from one day to the next, I may face a bunch of warnings because some maintainer somewhere decided they have a fresher version (lodash, pug/jade, node-uuid etc I'm looking at you).

Change your npm log info to just errors. Warnings don't mean your build broke, just that the version of a dep you installed is no longer supported and if you want bug fixes to upgrade.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#212

Post by zeveb »

dwaltrip wrote: post #147
zeveb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who is invested in the long-term success of the JS ecosystem, it becomes a lot easier just to remove yourself from the discussion because a lot of the community is so negative about the (older versions) of the language and ecosystem, purely on ideology. If a lot of people are so negative about it, is it worth even considering whether they might be correct? Is it not ideological to refuse to do so?

You honestly believe people who build web apps with javascript are not "real programmers"? Would you like to elaborate on that? It's not surprising that many find it offensive when people don't bother to differentiate between newbie programmers who have just learned the basics of jQuery and experienced front-end developers capable of building complex, well-architected applications.

> You honestly believe people who build web apps with javascript are not "real programmers"

I didn't write that, nor do I believe. JavaScript is a programming language — albeit a truly awful one — and thus people who get work done in it are by definition really programmers. And some of them have done some really quite amazing things with it.

That doesn't change the fact that the success of JavaScript is an embarrassment for our profession.

Sometimes everyone is negative about something which really isn't all that bad. Negativity about JavaScript isn't one of those times.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#213

Post by flukus »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #105
fusiongyro wrote: post #50

I don't want to distract from the main thrust of the article, which was that we should be decent to each other even with our criticism, but I think both his examples (Babel 6 and Angular 2) had something in common that lead to a lot more anxiety: they changed the essence of the software in a way that a major version bump is not enough to communicate. I'm speaking especially of Angular 2 here. It's essentially a compl…

A better approach is to spin off a new system and give it a new name Great point. I think some developers or teams feel compelled to update the latest even if they are happy with what they have because using an older version number gives the appearance of being behind the standards and practices. In a case where changes take place to the extent that it makes the previous framework difficult to recognize or breaks com…

It's because being on older versions limits your upgrade options. The further you get behind the more painful upgrading becomes.

You don't want to be in a position were you can't fix a bug because it's in the framework and you're several version behind.

There are also security issues with using older versions.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#214

Post by spion »

zeveb wrote: post #212
dwaltrip wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly believe people who build web apps with javascript are not "real programmers"? Would you like to elaborate on that? It's not surprising that many find it offensive when people don't bother to differentiate between newbie programmers who have just learned the basics of jQuery and experienced front-end developers capable of building complex, well-architected applications.

> You honestly believe people who build web apps with javascript are not "real programmers" I didn't write that, nor do I believe. JavaScript is a programming language — albeit a truly awful one — and thus people who get work done in it are by definition really programmers. And some of them have done some really quite amazing things with it. That doesn't change the fact that the success of JavaScript is an embarrassm…

JavaScript is pretty much average for a dynamic language.

Also, it doesn't matter how many people think its awful. What matters are the facts they present.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#215

Post by striking »

moosingin3space wrote: post #193
striking wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The response to his comment was immediate, unanimous, and unequivocal. HN mods responded, the comment was flagged and killed and downvoted to hell. Also, the way it was written may not have been the way he intended to come across. Read dang's comment, as well as his downthread comment. All things considered, HN is definitely not a bad place.

> All things considered, HN is definitely not a bad place. While I am very critical of many aspects of HN, I have had some excellent discussion here. I just wish it were more consistently good.

I haven't had higher quality discussion with this many people anywhere else on the internet. Sometimes there are not so great comment threads, sometimes people decide to take things too seriously and fail to pick up on humor... but generally I think this is a great place.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#216

Post by [deleted] »

nkw wrote: post #17

I was commenting to a colleague the other day how amazed I was at the sheer quantity of github "issues" that I was seeing posted to a few popular open source repositories that were rants about why feature X wasn't available yet or a priority yet, or demanding that someone walk them through some installation issue because the poster couldn't understand (or didn't read) the README. None of the people that posted this s…

[deleted]

Re: Dear JavaScript

#217

Post by kazinator »

GavinMcG wrote: post #169
jasode wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, no, that's not the same thing at all. Are you being literal? I wasn't saying that "repeated" meant lexical equality: string.compare("more positive", "optimistic") == TRUE Instead, I meant this: semantic_intent("more positive", "optimistic") == TRUE It's naive to think GavinMcG's "solution" of disapproving others negativity hasn't already been done thousands of times before across other disciplines and other forums…

Another big difference is that I'm not advocating for us to "repeat" that we should all be positive. It's not about public proclamation – it's about addressing individuals and their individual acts. That's what the communal discourse is made up of. Like you're saying, simply shouting "let's be nice" obviously doesn't work. I'll add another thing to my list of suggestions: be really deliberate about educating people o…

"JS-land" spans every web browser on the planet.

JavaScript isn't some open source little language with a little community; it's what everyone has to use to target a web browser, whether they like it or not.

Nobody has to like JavaScript or be in some unofficial JavaScript community in order to develop in JavaScript.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#218

Post by gigabo »

thejameskyle wrote: post #198
rygine wrote: post #101

I usually don't comment about these type of posts, but I felt I had to speak out here when the author of this article has been an offender of the things he's trying to promote. Perhaps he has just "seen the light," but I have my reservations. Specifically, these lines got to me: >If we focus on solutions, focus on helping others, focus on sharing ideas, we’ll be in a better place. We’re all part of a broader communit…

I got to work on Lerna for about two months while working at Cloudflare in order to ship cf-ui. Otherwise it was in the middle of a period where I mostly backed out of doing open source because of frustration with the community from early this year. So if Cloudflare hadn't done that I probably never would have gotten involved. I'm sorry I was often short-breathed when responding. I'm sorry I shut people down more tha…

Hi James,

I'm really sorry to hear about the difficult time you've been having. I can see how that would make an already thankless job like maintaining an open source project even more frustrating.

During my time as a Lerna contributor I was careful NOT to abuse my power. The few times I merged PRs I checked with Henry first. I pinged you at the beginning, too, but stopped eventually when I didn't hear from you. Mostly what I did, though, was triage issues and work with other contributors to get PRs into shape. I spent a lot of time over the summer working on Lerna, and only a small part of that was the code I wrote myself.

Then, suddenly, you started deleting my comments and locking my issues. You removed me from the organization without any discussion. That seemed to me an abuse of YOUR power. It hurt.

Please re-read the first comment of mine that you deleted. It wasn't meant to be aggressive. It was a plea.

---

My inspiration here comes primarily from two sources:

1. Using Lerna every day and thinking about how it could be improved to make my life easier.

2. Listening to feedback from _other_ Lerna users about how it could be improved to make _their_ lives easier.

You're one of the original core team, and I don't want to alienate you. Your rewrite of Lerna put in place a foundation that has been a pleasure to work with. But lately maintenance and improvement has continued in your absence thanks to contributions from Lerna's fledgling user community. Do you plan to reassume this responsibility?

---

That was here [1], but you deleted it and then locked the issue. I hope as you read it now you can see why it was surprising and hurtful that this was your response.

[1] https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/334

Re: Dear JavaScript

#219

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

atemerev wrote: post #72
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm... You do know that you don't have to use Babel to use JS, right? ES5 is here, it was here then, and it works very well. It might have some pointy ends, but they are very well documented at this point.

Yes, of course, unless you had invested a lot into React/JSX, and Babel is the only "official" way (documented and blessed by Facebook) to run React and JSX in production.

Ooh. Forgot about that. Sorry.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#220

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

zeveb wrote: post #74
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...But that's not even what he's talking about here. He's talking about people continually insulting him and his project over the internet, without even discussing the grievances they may have, legitimate though they may be. Also, JS isn't as fundamentally broken as you think. C is far more fundamentally broken than JS, and you like C, right? I mean, I kinda like C, too. But it's broken.

> Also, JS isn't as fundamentally broken as you think. C is far more fundamentally broken than JS, and you like C, right? Heck no! I think that the existence of C has set the fields of information technology, operating systems and computer science back by at least 50 years (yes, longer than C has existed: it's that bad). I don't hate K&R or any of the other folks involved with C and its descendants; I don't think tha…

Well, at least your POV is consistant. Which is more than I can say for many here.

I maintain that JS is an acceptable language despite its flaws, and that the best way to write JS is to just buck up and learn about them, rather than trying to paper them over.

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