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Your comment reminded me of this highly entertaining talk - https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsof

by aidanhs 11y ago

Your comment reminded me of this highly entertaining talk - https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... Although tongue in cheek, I think it gives some food for thought. I feel like WebAssembly is to asm.js what the modern JS profession is to old follow-your-cursor effect on webpages - it becomes something to take seriously and use, and having done a bunch of porting things with Emscripten the idea of a browser within a browser doesn't sound as crazy as it used to!

jerf 11y ago
To be honest, WebAssembly isn't really javascript anymore. asm.js was, albeit only sorta-kinda-just-barely (but in an important way), but WebAssembly isn't. There's a reasonable case to be made that in 20 years "everything" will be WebAssembly, but we won't be calling it Javascript, thinking of it like Javascript, or using it like Javascript. In the long term, this is the death knell for Javascript-as-the-only-choice. Javascript will live on, but when left to fend for itself on its own merits, it's just another 1990s-style dynamic scripting language with little to particularly recommend it over all the other 1990s-style dynamic scripting languages. But Javascript programmers need not fear this... it will be a very long, gradual transition. You'll have abundant time to make adjustments if you need to, and should you not want to, there will still be Javascript jobs for a very long time.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  You act like JavaScript's only upside is the fact that it's required in the browser. IME the opposite is true. I'm seeing companies flock to it outside of browser contexts in areas where "code reuse" or "isometric/universal" style programs aren't even possible.
  - jerf 11y ago
    It's not that it's the only upside. It's that once out of the browser, it isn't really a standout language. For instance, if you're going to have a "fair fight" out there, one can't help but notice that Python already has everything that we're standing around waiting for in ES6, plus the next couple of iterations. And that's just Python. You should also check into Perl, Ruby, Lua, and PHP, and that's without straying even a little outside of the "1990s dynamic scripting language" field, to say nothing of what you can find if you leave that behind. It just isn't that impressive of a language once you remove the browser prop. It isn't necessarily bad, or at least no worse than some other popular languages as well, but there's nothing uniquely good about it in the greater language landscape. To be honest, anyone who thinks that Javascript does have some sort of unique advantage needs to get out more and learn a few more languages. Even Python, which you'll find goes very quickly if you already know JS. Javascript is very, very not special. Again, since people seem to confuse these things, that does not make it bad, but it's very not special. Very boring, middle-of-the-road scripting lanugage that is, if anything, well behind the other ones in features because of its multihead, no-leader-in-practice development model.
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      But JS isn't just a "worse python" either. I've gotten around when it comes to languages, from business-basic to c++ to go to python, php, ruby, js, lua, and lisp. Having spent a non-trivial amount of time in each, JS has by far one of the best ecosystems i've ever seen. See, I hate talking about languages because it's hard to define what a language even is. Is it purely the syntax? Is it syntax+standard library? Or is it the whole set of syntax+libraries+ecosystem+idioms? From a purely syntax point of view, js is lacking some things and while they are getting fixed, it's taking longer than most would like. And i agree that in this aspect js is currently "mediocre" at best. From a "whole ecosystem" point of view, js is wonderful. It's fast, secure enough to give arbitrary code from anyone in a browser, has a stupidly huge set of libraries, an "idiomatic" style which works very well for some problems, and it's almost literally everywhere and on everything, has multiple competing implementations that helps drive performance and reduce bugs. Yeah, it's got it's quirks (and in JS's case, a lot of them), but every language it's age and older does. Now if there was some way to magically take all of the "other" parts from js and apply them to another language, you'd have an overnight success, but the fact is that the language syntax is such a small part of what a language truly is.

by aidanhs 11y ago

jerf 11y ago

To be honest, WebAssembly isn't really javascript anymore. asm.js was, albeit only sorta-kinda-just-barely (but in an important way), but WebAssembly isn't. There's a reasonable case to be made that in 20 years "everything" will be WebAssembly, but we won't be calling it Javascript, thinking of it like Javascript, or using it like Javascript. In the long term, this is the death knell for Javascript-as-the-only-choice. Javascript will live on, but when left to fend for itself on its own merits, it's just another 1990s-style dynamic scripting language with little to particularly recommend it over all the other 1990s-style dynamic scripting languages. But Javascript programmers need not fear this... it will be a very long, gradual transition. You'll have abundant time to make adjustments if you need to, and should you not want to, there will still be Javascript jobs for a very long time.

Klathmon 11y ago
You act like JavaScript's only upside is the fact that it's required in the browser. IME the opposite is true. I'm seeing companies flock to it outside of browser contexts in areas where "code reuse" or "isometric/universal" style programs aren't even possible.
- jerf 11y ago
  It's not that it's the only upside. It's that once out of the browser, it isn't really a standout language. For instance, if you're going to have a "fair fight" out there, one can't help but notice that Python already has everything that we're standing around waiting for in ES6, plus the next couple of iterations. And that's just Python. You should also check into Perl, Ruby, Lua, and PHP, and that's without straying even a little outside of the "1990s dynamic scripting language" field, to say nothing of what you can find if you leave that behind. It just isn't that impressive of a language once you remove the browser prop. It isn't necessarily bad, or at least no worse than some other popular languages as well, but there's nothing uniquely good about it in the greater language landscape. To be honest, anyone who thinks that Javascript does have some sort of unique advantage needs to get out more and learn a few more languages. Even Python, which you'll find goes very quickly if you already know JS. Javascript is very, very not special. Again, since people seem to confuse these things, that does not make it bad, but it's very not special. Very boring, middle-of-the-road scripting lanugage that is, if anything, well behind the other ones in features because of its multihead, no-leader-in-practice development model.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    But JS isn't just a "worse python" either. I've gotten around when it comes to languages, from business-basic to c++ to go to python, php, ruby, js, lua, and lisp. Having spent a non-trivial amount of time in each, JS has by far one of the best ecosystems i've ever seen. See, I hate talking about languages because it's hard to define what a language even is. Is it purely the syntax? Is it syntax+standard library? Or is it the whole set of syntax+libraries+ecosystem+idioms? From a purely syntax point of view, js is lacking some things and while they are getting fixed, it's taking longer than most would like. And i agree that in this aspect js is currently "mediocre" at best. From a "whole ecosystem" point of view, js is wonderful. It's fast, secure enough to give arbitrary code from anyone in a browser, has a stupidly huge set of libraries, an "idiomatic" style which works very well for some problems, and it's almost literally everywhere and on everything, has multiple competing implementations that helps drive performance and reduce bugs. Yeah, it's got it's quirks (and in JS's case, a lot of them), but every language it's age and older does. Now if there was some way to magically take all of the "other" parts from js and apply them to another language, you'd have an overnight success, but the fact is that the language syntax is such a small part of what a language truly is.