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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, an

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
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Google's cars are operating on city streets you know. They're up to over 1.5 million miles.
- TeMPOraL 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. I think that not only we would have self-driving cars, they'd be working much more reliably than proposed solutions of today, and would utilize some pretty clever analog-driven methods. The problem isn't with JavaScript, the problem is with the culture which glorifies mindlesss throwing of shit at a wall to see what sticks, instead of actually thinking of what one's doing and checking if a given topic wasn't already explored by smart people a few decades ago.
  - porker 10y ago
    > I think that not only we would have self-driving cars, they'd be working much more reliably than proposed solutions of today, and would utilize some pretty clever analog-driven methods. More info please?

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
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Google's cars are operating on city streets you know. They're up to over 1.5 million miles.
TeMPOraL 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. I think that not only we would have self-driving cars, they'd be working much more reliably than proposed solutions of today, and would utilize some pretty clever analog-driven methods. The problem isn't with JavaScript, the problem is with the culture which glorifies mindlesss throwing of shit at a wall to see what sticks, instead of actually thinking of what one's doing and checking if a given topic wasn't already explored by smart people a few decades ago.
- porker 10y ago
  > I think that not only we would have self-driving cars, they'd be working much more reliably than proposed solutions of today, and would utilize some pretty clever analog-driven methods. More info please?