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Languages don't scale. Systems scale. Without said, Javascript has never really been the language for programming in the large. But make no mistake about i

Languages don't scale. Systems scale. Without said, Javascript has never really been the language for programming in the large. But make no mistake about it, it's slowly getting there as is evident by huge applications, not just web but even desktop that are being built with it. It's not impossible to refactor. The issue from what I've seen is that people think it as if it's a class based language instead of the prototypical language that is.

rer 10y ago
> Languages don't scale. Why not?
wvenable 10y ago
> The issue from what I've seen is that people think it as if it's a class based language instead of the prototypical language that is. This always gets trotted out as the issue. "It's not JavaScript that's bad for building large applications, it's just everyone is using it wrong." Prototype inheritance is even more brittle and hard to follow than class-based inheritance which is why developers, for their own sanity, try and shoe-horn it in.
- astrodust 10y ago
  We put people on the moon without benefit of "scalable" languages, we built entire operating systems in C which is notorious for quickly becoming unreadable, and we've somehow built an entire world of content using HTML and CSS. JavaScript is just a language, and while improvements to it are being made constantly, the biggest obstacle is not the language, nor the way browser makers support it, but the absurdly slow pace of some organizations to update their browsers to something sane. Pick a language, any language, and then restrict yourself to features only ten years old. That's what JavaScript is like in some cases, but the good news is ten years ago some pretty good things were happening.
  - wvenable 10y ago
    > We put people on the moon without benefit of "scalable" languages The computer for the Apollo missions had approximately 64Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz. My wrist-watch is many orders of magnitude more powerful than that. But the programming effort that went into it was huge (literally: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*qJnPOGdtk1q7dq17tx1aYg.gif https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*qJnPOGdtk1q7dq17tx... ). If we were stilling coding things that way, we might be able to go to the moon but we wouldn't have self-driving cars. > Pick a language, any language, and then restrict yourself to features only ten years old. C# 2.0 in 2006 added: Generics Partial types Anonymous methods Iterators Nullable types Getter/setter separate accessibility Method group conversions (delegates) Co- and Contra-variance for delegates Static classes Delegate inference Not to mention C# 1.0 already being statically and strongly typed, had properties and events, reference and value types, interfaces, namespaces, and a reasonably complete standard library. And that's just one language. JavaScript is so far away from this it's not even funny. It doesn't even have proper numeric types. It's casting rules compare favorably with PHP! So I don't buy the argument that JavaScript isn't suitable for large projects because browser makers aren't keeping up with the latest standards. JavaScript is a scripting language that's been pushed into tasks it's not suitable for because it is everywhere.
    - circlefavshape 10y ago
      > If we were stilling coding things that way, we might be able to go to the moon but we wouldn't have self-driving cars Erm ... we actually don't have self-driving cars
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Google and Tesla beg to differ.
        circlefavshape 10y ago
        For a very restricted definition of "self-driving" ... but fair enough, in the context of the parent post, the self-driving cars we do have are impressive pieces of software
flukus 10y ago
What huge application are built with javascript? Visual Studio Code is probably the biggest I can think of and I don't know what would be second.
- realharo 10y ago
  VS Code is built with TypeScript.
- mifreewil 10y ago
  Brave, Slack, Atom, Popcorn Time, I'm sure there are many others. Electron (http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/) is becoming a popular framework to use.
  - fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
    I think the OP meant huge in terms of complexity rather than memory usage..
  - flukus 10y ago
    Brave is a web browser, so I'd give electron most of the credit for making that work. Popcorn time I don't know anything about. Slack and atom though? Both are simple client UI's and both have much less bloated alternatives.
    - mifreewil 10y ago
      Yes, admittedly, none of these are that complex. I thought Visual Studio Code was built ontop of Atom, but I might be wrong. Both built on Electron anyway - which was originally part of Atom.

rer 10y ago

> Languages don't scale. Why not?

wvenable 10y ago

> The issue from what I've seen is that people think it as if it's a class based language instead of the prototypical language that is. This always gets trotted out as the issue. "It's not JavaScript that's bad for building large applications, it's just everyone is using it wrong." Prototype inheritance is even more brittle and hard to follow than class-based inheritance which is why developers, for their own sanity, try and shoe-horn it in.

astrodust 10y ago
We put people on the moon without benefit of "scalable" languages, we built entire operating systems in C which is notorious for quickly becoming unreadable, and we've somehow built an entire world of content using HTML and CSS. JavaScript is just a language, and while improvements to it are being made constantly, the biggest obstacle is not the language, nor the way browser makers support it, but the absurdly slow pace of some organizations to update their browsers to something sane. Pick a language, any language, and then restrict yourself to features only ten years old. That's what JavaScript is like in some cases, but the good news is ten years ago some pretty good things were happening.
- wvenable 10y ago
  > We put people on the moon without benefit of "scalable" languages The computer for the Apollo missions had approximately 64Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz. My wrist-watch is many orders of magnitude more powerful than that. But the programming effort that went into it was huge (literally: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*qJnPOGdtk1q7dq17tx1aYg.gif https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*qJnPOGdtk1q7dq17tx... ). If we were stilling coding things that way, we might be able to go to the moon but we wouldn't have self-driving cars. > Pick a language, any language, and then restrict yourself to features only ten years old. C# 2.0 in 2006 added: Generics Partial types Anonymous methods Iterators Nullable types Getter/setter separate accessibility Method group conversions (delegates) Co- and Contra-variance for delegates Static classes Delegate inference Not to mention C# 1.0 already being statically and strongly typed, had properties and events, reference and value types, interfaces, namespaces, and a reasonably complete standard library. And that's just one language. JavaScript is so far away from this it's not even funny. It doesn't even have proper numeric types. It's casting rules compare favorably with PHP! So I don't buy the argument that JavaScript isn't suitable for large projects because browser makers aren't keeping up with the latest standards. JavaScript is a scripting language that's been pushed into tasks it's not suitable for because it is everywhere.
  - circlefavshape 10y ago
    > If we were stilling coding things that way, we might be able to go to the moon but we wouldn't have self-driving cars Erm ... we actually don't have self-driving cars
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Google and Tesla beg to differ.
      - circlefavshape 10y ago
        For a very restricted definition of "self-driving" ... but fair enough, in the context of the parent post, the self-driving cars we do have are impressive pieces of software

flukus 10y ago

What huge application are built with javascript? Visual Studio Code is probably the biggest I can think of and I don't know what would be second.

realharo 10y ago
VS Code is built with TypeScript.
mifreewil 10y ago
Brave, Slack, Atom, Popcorn Time, I'm sure there are many others. Electron (http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/) is becoming a popular framework to use.
- fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
  I think the OP meant huge in terms of complexity rather than memory usage..
- flukus 10y ago
  Brave is a web browser, so I'd give electron most of the credit for making that work. Popcorn time I don't know anything about. Slack and atom though? Both are simple client UI's and both have much less bloated alternatives.
  - mifreewil 10y ago
    Yes, admittedly, none of these are that complex. I thought Visual Studio Code was built ontop of Atom, but I might be wrong. Both built on Electron anyway - which was originally part of Atom.