Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

JavaScript at 20

brendaneich.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 327 posts

Re: JavaScript at 20

#41

Post by pcwalton »

teacup50 wrote: post #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 pr…

"Always bet on JS" is short for "There have been dozens of challengers to JavaScript over the last 20 years, and they have all failed to gain traction". What part of that statement is incorrect?

Re: JavaScript at 20

#42

Post by bshimmin »

sker wrote: post #23

I never understood why HN likes slideshows so much. Am I the only one who finds them completely, 100% useless without the audio of the presentation?

You really aren't. I have never made it through more than about 10 or 15 slides in a deck, and this was no exception.

The text version of a talk, however, can be a wondrous thing, and here's a great example: http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm

Re: JavaScript at 20

#43

Post by maxlybbert »

untog wrote: post #15
collyw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

There are certainly really bad languages (say, brainfuck). Once you admit that some languages are worse than others, you admit that there can be a hierachy. Of course, it's possible for the hierarchy to have a 256-way tie for first place.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#44

Post by gweinberg »

sker wrote: post #23

I never understood why HN likes slideshows so much. Am I the only one who finds them completely, 100% useless without the audio of the presentation?

I agree. Transcript without the slides, almost as good as both. Just slides withouyt transcript or audio, shit sandwich.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#45

Post by deezenuts »

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…

ok

Re: JavaScript at 20

#46

Post by iamthepieman »

M8 wrote: 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.

An "ideal" language is so much more than just the type system or safety or expressibility. This is true of natural languages just as much as computer languages.

It has just as much to do with the tooling, community, support and adoption - again, just like natural languages.

I think the ubiquitous languages ARE the best languages because the purpose of any language, natural, computer or otherwise is to transmit information and meaning. And the ubiquitous ones are, by definition, best suited for that.

Re: JavaScript at 20

#47

Post by gtirloni »

vbezhenar wrote: post #39

I wonder whether `let` should be used everywhere now making `var` effectively obsolete? Mixing both declaration styles looks bad.

I'm not a JS programmer so I was confused with using "let" and the arrow function to create a function versus using "function funcname {}".

Re: JavaScript at 20

#48

Post by tedunangst »

peter303 wrote: post #33

Why did they ever have to confuse the named with the Java programming language? They are quite different. https://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/A_Short_History_of_J...

Read your own link? "This was somewhat of a marketing move at the time, with Java being very popular around then."

Re: JavaScript at 20

#50

Post by wil421 »

sker wrote: post #23

I never understood why HN likes slideshows so much. Am I the only one who finds them completely, 100% useless without the audio of the presentation?

I didnt even realize it was a slideshow. No arrows or icons you can click to go to the next/previous slide and nothing on the website saying its a slideshow.

Thanks for your comment. After I read it I went back and clicked an arrow key and the cubeshow started.

Post reply on HN