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"Beating the Averages" is also a good read. I read these essays for the first time a some years ago at a time when I was being assigned to a Javascript project
by mvindahl 10y ago
"Beating the Averages" is also a good read.
I read these essays for the first time a some years ago at a time when I was being assigned to a Javascript project and, much to my own surprise, had gone from ridiculing the language to secretly kind of liking it. At the time I had been working with Java for 10+ years and Javascript had always been regarded as this inbred cousin from Kansas that you didn't really want to be seen in company with.
Anyway, reading Graham's essays on computer languages helped me understand that Javascript was actually one rung up the abstractness ladder compared to Java, and that the language that I had always considered to be limited was instead extremely flexible and hence, stronger.
BTW, a curious thing about Graham is that he measures the strength of a language by how many features it shares with Lisp. Hence, no language will ever surpass Lisp using that yardstick.
- TurboHaskal 10y agoI also liked the article back in the day and drank the kool-aid. Except that the averages ended up beating the nerds, which is empirically observed by glancing at today's most successful and widely used software; and Lisp today is a fringe idea with its most popular implementation being a JVM transvestite. As for Javascript being an acceptable Scheme, I'm personally happy to see it merely running in the browser and the servers of a bunch of SV startups, where it cannot do harm to society.
- mvindahl 10y agoDunno. I think for a startup it makes good sense to have a dynamic language with a good package manager. For someone writing something which needs to be performant, and the requirements don't change too much, C is probably a superior choice. It's all about tradeoffs IMHO.