4 ms·

I think these reports from the field are worthwhile. The guy is an experienced programmer. I thought it was interesting that he was a hard core Java/C# and hate

I think these reports from the field are worthwhile. The guy is an experienced programmer. I thought it was interesting that he was a hard core Java/C# and hated JavaScript when he had to use it. Then after a couple of years of JavaScript, he fell in love with the expressiveness and ease of coding and chaffed at the restrictions of Java/C#. Then he had to do a large app in JavaScript and hit the point where he it was really painful to refactor and he missed the tools he had in Java and C#. Finding TypeScript was, as Goldilocks said "just right." The tagline of TypeScript is "JavaScript that Scales" for exactly this reason. His journey mirrors mine and probably a lot of others. I got there from thier other article "Does Electron live up to the hype?" https://www.cycligent.com/blog/does-electron-live-up-to-the-hype/ https://www.cycligent.com/blog/does-electron-live-up-to-the-... tl;dr - It does I am not associated with the company. I download and tried Cycligent to see how their Elecron app turned out (I'm a big fan of Electron.) It looks like a decent git client, although it feels like a web app with the dialogs that slide in. I could get used to it. Screen shot: http://imgur.com/a/y5F5A http://imgur.com/a/y5F5A

mixedCase 10y ago
>I got there from thier other article "Does Electron live up to the hype?" tl;dr - It does It creates applications that require at the very least three times as many resources as Qt, which is also a cross-platform tool-kit that allows you a lot of freedom (specially with QML) as well as native OS widgets using a single codebase (although probably compromising on the HIGs' patterns for each OS). I fail to see how Electron lives up to its hype as a holy grail for cross-platform application development, unless my impression of the hype behind it is wrong.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  It is just the second coming of Mozilla XUL, just that this generation hyping Electron was still on their diapers, so they haven't seen it coming and going away without living any trace of it besides Firefox and Thunderbird.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    Can we have a rational discussion about web technologies without resorting to insults and ad hominem attacks on an entire "generation"?
    - talmand 10y ago
      Rational? This is a discussion about hating a language for silly reasons. They must let the hate out or they'll be bitter forever.
      - mixedCase 10y ago
        While there are plenty of things to be said about JavaScript and its ecosystem which I very much doubt you could dismiss as silly, this discussion is about Electron. Meaning, an entire browser runtime being shipped to power a simple desktop appliaction, for a small developer benefit over other cross-platform toolkits and to great detriment for the users. And please, if you believe you are above those ad-hominem attacks, don't use them yourself.
        talmand 10y ago
        Strange, the comment I was responding to was not about Electron, but web technologies. And exactly where was my ad-hominem attack?
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    And thank God for the second coming! Jesus, it's about time. Electron is much better than XUL along many dimensions. At least it doesn't force you to use XML external entities in DTD files for text localization. [1] You just call the Electron localization function! ;) [2] [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tutorial/Localization https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_localization_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_localization_function
    - 10y ago
mattmanser 10y ago
From what he wrote, he was writing Java and switched to JavaScript. C# got lambda expressions years before Java, if he wasn't using them, then yes, those languages are very restrictive. They solved most of the expressiveness problems; at least for me. And Java only got them a year or two ago didn't it? I use typescript a lot at the moment, I really miss it now when I have to write vanilla js, but it's still not a great language. You still have to think about 'this' a lot, 'this' still causes bugs, in many ways it's over verbose because every property and method call has to be prepended with 'this.'.
- boubiyeah 10y ago
  yes it's the same language. You don't have to use 'this', prototypes or classes a single time in your program. It's so much saner without all that crap.
  - kinkdr 10y ago
    I agree, if you ignore classes, prototypes and 'this', js makes for an excellent functional language.

mixedCase 10y ago

>I got there from thier other article "Does Electron live up to the hype?" tl;dr - It does It creates applications that require at the very least three times as many resources as Qt, which is also a cross-platform tool-kit that allows you a lot of freedom (specially with QML) as well as native OS widgets using a single codebase (although probably compromising on the HIGs' patterns for each OS). I fail to see how Electron lives up to its hype as a holy grail for cross-platform application development, unless my impression of the hype behind it is wrong.

pjmlp 10y ago
It is just the second coming of Mozilla XUL, just that this generation hyping Electron was still on their diapers, so they haven't seen it coming and going away without living any trace of it besides Firefox and Thunderbird.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  Can we have a rational discussion about web technologies without resorting to insults and ad hominem attacks on an entire "generation"?
  - talmand 10y ago
    Rational? This is a discussion about hating a language for silly reasons. They must let the hate out or they'll be bitter forever.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      While there are plenty of things to be said about JavaScript and its ecosystem which I very much doubt you could dismiss as silly, this discussion is about Electron. Meaning, an entire browser runtime being shipped to power a simple desktop appliaction, for a small developer benefit over other cross-platform toolkits and to great detriment for the users. And please, if you believe you are above those ad-hominem attacks, don't use them yourself.
      - talmand 10y ago
        Strange, the comment I was responding to was not about Electron, but web technologies. And exactly where was my ad-hominem attack?
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  And thank God for the second coming! Jesus, it's about time. Electron is much better than XUL along many dimensions. At least it doesn't force you to use XML external entities in DTD files for text localization. [1] You just call the Electron localization function! ;) [2] [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tutorial/Localization https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_localization_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_localization_function
  - 10y ago

mattmanser 10y ago

From what he wrote, he was writing Java and switched to JavaScript. C# got lambda expressions years before Java, if he wasn't using them, then yes, those languages are very restrictive. They solved most of the expressiveness problems; at least for me. And Java only got them a year or two ago didn't it? I use typescript a lot at the moment, I really miss it now when I have to write vanilla js, but it's still not a great language. You still have to think about 'this' a lot, 'this' still causes bugs, in many ways it's over verbose because every property and method call has to be prepended with 'this.'.

boubiyeah 10y ago
yes it's the same language. You don't have to use 'this', prototypes or classes a single time in your program. It's so much saner without all that crap.
- kinkdr 10y ago
  I agree, if you ignore classes, prototypes and 'this', js makes for an excellent functional language.