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Why does it happen so often that the technically weak languages get picked and become widely used? Why Javascript? Is there something about technical superiorit

by vesak 10y ago

Why does it happen so often that the technically weak languages get picked and become widely used? Why Javascript? Is there something about technical superiority that makes less business value?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bengotow 10y ago
Honestly, I think JavaScript was just in the right place at the right time. If you haven't seen ES2016 yet though, it's really worth a look. Electron JavaScript isn't the jQuery crap of the 1990's. It's got destructuring assignment, classes, template strings, let / const, you name it... https://github.com/lukehoban/es6features https://github.com/lukehoban/es6features
- nathancahill 10y ago
  "classes"
- T-A 10y ago
  I feel compelled to point out that jQuery 1.0 was released in August 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery#History
- collyw 10y ago
  The web browser being the right place. There still isn't any real competition there.
nostrademons 10y ago
https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html tl;dr: Ubiquity is a feature. Implementation simplicity enables ubiquity by making it easy to port and easy to bring new people on board. Implementation simplicity also frequently results in technical inferiority, but it doesn't matter, because users would rather have substandard software that runs quickly on all devices they target than excellent software that is either slow or unavailable.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
calsy 10y ago
Yes as bengotow said, I don't think its a matter of whether the language is weak/strong, rather its just a matter of circumstance. The holy grail of web development has always been the ability to write web apps that can run across all popular browsers. I think many have been waiting for JS to be the language it should have been for so long now. Its seems the time has finally arrived and BAM! JS explosion. JS is not bad at all (JS now that is), its an incredibly flexible language. This obviously annoys many as there are no hard and fast rules for development (framework hell anyone?) but as a language you can apply it to most any environment.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hkjgkjy 10y ago
It's not technically inferior. I think historically many have confused not-like-java with technically inferior in Javascripts case. Combined with the fact that people who make client-side JS are less Real Developers (no true scotsman would code in js!). JS is a dynamically typed functional language. Not unlike Scheme or Clojure. It's long history has made the standard library be a mix of programming styles, but I usually make heavy use of Ramda or Lodash and other functional wrappers to get a coherent interface nowadays. What was a mistake was including `this` keyword though. Never use it, just like you would never do so in Scheme or Clojure. Carthago delenda est.
- vesak 10y ago
  >It's not technically inferior. Come on. It has plenty of unique problems with no upsides. If that's not inferior, I don't know what is.
  - krisdol 10y ago
    No upsides compared to what? Faster development time compared to Java, C-family languages is an upside. Faster VM (V8) than Ruby MRI, and just about every other dynamic scripting language, is also an upside. It's also an incredibly easy language to learn and write. Many of the weird inherent flaws went away with strict mode and ES5, ES2015 has helped make it much more elegant to read. Of course, you can always switch to a superior language like Elm that benefits from the same VM.
    - vesak 10y ago
      Oh, I did not mean to say that Javascript has no upsides whatsoever. It clearly does. I meant to say that it has problems which have no upsides. By which I mean that it has certain weaknesses that contribute nothing to its good features and that could have been designed correctly without negatively impacting anything. They are just plain mistakes.
  - oceanswave 10y ago
    The unique problem you mention I think is vocal commenters that see "JavaScript" and immediately take a one-sided mentality against any tech stack that uses it.
moron4hire 10y ago
I think we can blame smartphone operating system developers for this. For so long they dug their heals in on only allowing certain languages run on their systems. But they also put a web browser on the phone, and then worked to make that browser match the desktop version as closely as possible. It was an escape hatch to be able to write cross-platform code, once and for all. Oh, sure, Android ran "Java", but it didn't include enough library commonalities with desktop to work. Same with iOS and Objective-C (which is practically unheard of outside of the Apple sphere). I've had far easier times getting one binary to run in Windows Mobile, desktop Windows, and Linux. So I think there are very good social reasons why JS "won out." Perhaps it was the weakness of the language itself that made it possible. It didn't seem like a threat in 2008.

by vesak 10y ago

Why does it happen so often that the technically weak languages get picked and become widely used? Why Javascript? Is there something about technical superiority that makes less business value?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bengotow 10y ago

Honestly, I think JavaScript was just in the right place at the right time. If you haven't seen ES2016 yet though, it's really worth a look. Electron JavaScript isn't the jQuery crap of the 1990's. It's got destructuring assignment, classes, template strings, let / const, you name it... https://github.com/lukehoban/es6features https://github.com/lukehoban/es6features

nathancahill 10y ago
"classes"
T-A 10y ago
I feel compelled to point out that jQuery 1.0 was released in August 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery#History
collyw 10y ago
The web browser being the right place. There still isn't any real competition there.

nostrademons 10y ago

https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html tl;dr: Ubiquity is a feature. Implementation simplicity enables ubiquity by making it easy to port and easy to bring new people on board. Implementation simplicity also frequently results in technical inferiority, but it doesn't matter, because users would rather have substandard software that runs quickly on all devices they target than excellent software that is either slow or unavailable.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

calsy 10y ago

Yes as bengotow said, I don't think its a matter of whether the language is weak/strong, rather its just a matter of circumstance. The holy grail of web development has always been the ability to write web apps that can run across all popular browsers. I think many have been waiting for JS to be the language it should have been for so long now. Its seems the time has finally arrived and BAM! JS explosion. JS is not bad at all (JS now that is), its an incredibly flexible language. This obviously annoys many as there are no hard and fast rules for development (framework hell anyone?) but as a language you can apply it to most any environment.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

hkjgkjy 10y ago

It's not technically inferior. I think historically many have confused not-like-java with technically inferior in Javascripts case. Combined with the fact that people who make client-side JS are less Real Developers (no true scotsman would code in js!). JS is a dynamically typed functional language. Not unlike Scheme or Clojure. It's long history has made the standard library be a mix of programming styles, but I usually make heavy use of Ramda or Lodash and other functional wrappers to get a coherent interface nowadays. What was a mistake was including `this` keyword though. Never use it, just like you would never do so in Scheme or Clojure. Carthago delenda est.

vesak 10y ago
>It's not technically inferior. Come on. It has plenty of unique problems with no upsides. If that's not inferior, I don't know what is.
- krisdol 10y ago
  No upsides compared to what? Faster development time compared to Java, C-family languages is an upside. Faster VM (V8) than Ruby MRI, and just about every other dynamic scripting language, is also an upside. It's also an incredibly easy language to learn and write. Many of the weird inherent flaws went away with strict mode and ES5, ES2015 has helped make it much more elegant to read. Of course, you can always switch to a superior language like Elm that benefits from the same VM.
  - vesak 10y ago
    Oh, I did not mean to say that Javascript has no upsides whatsoever. It clearly does. I meant to say that it has problems which have no upsides. By which I mean that it has certain weaknesses that contribute nothing to its good features and that could have been designed correctly without negatively impacting anything. They are just plain mistakes.
- oceanswave 10y ago
  The unique problem you mention I think is vocal commenters that see "JavaScript" and immediately take a one-sided mentality against any tech stack that uses it.

moron4hire 10y ago

I think we can blame smartphone operating system developers for this. For so long they dug their heals in on only allowing certain languages run on their systems. But they also put a web browser on the phone, and then worked to make that browser match the desktop version as closely as possible. It was an escape hatch to be able to write cross-platform code, once and for all. Oh, sure, Android ran "Java", but it didn't include enough library commonalities with desktop to work. Same with iOS and Objective-C (which is practically unheard of outside of the Apple sphere). I've had far easier times getting one binary to run in Windows Mobile, desktop Windows, and Linux. So I think there are very good social reasons why JS "won out." Perhaps it was the weakness of the language itself that made it possible. It didn't seem like a threat in 2008.