7 ms·

Monocultures develop because one tool is far better than all the others. Javascript isn't a monoculture because all the tools are bad.

Tloewald 10y ago
Ah and so what good monoculture can you direct us to?
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Rails? Ruby isn't a monoculture, but Rails does seem pretty dominant.
  - mnutt 10y ago
    If you like the Rails monoculture, you may like Ember as a front-end framework. Most of the choices are made for you, and on the whole they're very good default choices. If you choose Ember, you get: a CLI tool (ember-cli), a templating/rendering engine (Glimmer), a router, a persistence layer (ember-data), a unit testing tool (qunit), a server-side renderer (fastboot), etc. If you want to swap one of things out you can, but the default has great support. There have been some bumps along the way, but everything fits together and works.
colordrops 10y ago
By the way, the OP I responded to said "front-end", not "JavaScript". How does your attitude jive with WebAssembly which will allow you to compile C++ or Rust for the browser?
- copperx 10y ago
  I've been struggling to understand how WebAssembly will change things on the web. Will you be able to compile an arbitrary C/C++ binary to run on a browser? Will syscalls be emulated? What about the filesystem? It looks like to get such a thing working we would need an OS running on top of JS. But maybe I'm missing something.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    There is clearly some sort of mapping available to a JavaScript FFI for doing I/O, as both the Unreal engine and Unity have been ported to WebAssembly. If you can run a video game engine in the browser you can run anything. I believe there are proposals in place as well to add opcodes to directly interface with browser capabilities rather than going through a JS FFI.
    - leeoniya 10y ago
      > If you can run a video game engine in the browser you can run anything no
      - colordrops 10y ago
        enlighten us
        leeoniya 10y ago
        ok, assuming your request is not sarcastic: - operating systems - hardware drivers - a networking stack - trading algorithms - fighter jet firmware - ultra low latency DSP - processing data from LHC collisions or imaging satellites. - etc - etc - etc just because webgl enables fast gpu processing (by basically writing a small subset of C that is shader code) doesnt now mean the web platform can be used for evetything.
        colordrops 10y ago
        The implication was applications. But even then, everything on your list is emphatically not true: - operating systems Ironically Linux was one of the first things to ever be compiled to run in the browser using empscripten. - hardware drivers Linux doesn't run without hardware drivers. In this case, the hardware drivers were wrapping JS FFIs. - a networking stack Yes you can. - trading algorithms Why not? - fighter jet firmware It's not a fighter jet, but the SpaceX Dragon 2 space capsule's UI is built using Chromium. - ultra low latency DSP Why not? - processing data from LHC collisions or imaging satellites. Why not?
mattnewton 10y ago
Monocultures develop because of corporate backing. The web being open and unclaimed is what leads to the great diversity. As someone who does both server and JavaScript development, the tools are not bad. Often times they solve real problems well.
- quadrupleslap 10y ago
  That's silly - if anything it's the other way around. Web tools have a ridiculous degree of corporate backing, especially with the countless libraries from Facebook and Google (React, Angular, Go, Dart, Flow, IMMUTABLE, etc.), and even Microsoft with TypeScript and others. Meanwhile, Make and friends don't have any corporate backing.
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Plus IE and Chrome, fwiw
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    None of them can lay claim to the web though, contrasted with other ui platforms like windows, ios, etc.
- camgunz 10y ago
  The web is pretty much corporate. All the major tools are built by major corporations, all the browsers are developed by major corporations (with the exception of Firefox, but Mozilla gets most of its money from major corporations) all the major web players are major corporations, all the major web monetization is rented by corporations. The web's no longer an open platform. Yeah you can put up a blog on your own server using only FOSS. But if you want to drive traffic to it, you're using a huge corporate ad network or some SEO company. If you want to scale it, you're using a huge corporate cloud. If you want to make money on it, you're using a huge corporate ad network.
  - samfisher83 10y ago
    Firefox started out as Netscape so you can trace it back to big company.

Tloewald 10y ago

Ah and so what good monoculture can you direct us to?

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Rails? Ruby isn't a monoculture, but Rails does seem pretty dominant.
- mnutt 10y ago
  If you like the Rails monoculture, you may like Ember as a front-end framework. Most of the choices are made for you, and on the whole they're very good default choices. If you choose Ember, you get: a CLI tool (ember-cli), a templating/rendering engine (Glimmer), a router, a persistence layer (ember-data), a unit testing tool (qunit), a server-side renderer (fastboot), etc. If you want to swap one of things out you can, but the default has great support. There have been some bumps along the way, but everything fits together and works.

colordrops 10y ago

By the way, the OP I responded to said "front-end", not "JavaScript". How does your attitude jive with WebAssembly which will allow you to compile C++ or Rust for the browser?

copperx 10y ago
I've been struggling to understand how WebAssembly will change things on the web. Will you be able to compile an arbitrary C/C++ binary to run on a browser? Will syscalls be emulated? What about the filesystem? It looks like to get such a thing working we would need an OS running on top of JS. But maybe I'm missing something.
- colordrops 10y ago
  There is clearly some sort of mapping available to a JavaScript FFI for doing I/O, as both the Unreal engine and Unity have been ported to WebAssembly. If you can run a video game engine in the browser you can run anything. I believe there are proposals in place as well to add opcodes to directly interface with browser capabilities rather than going through a JS FFI.
  - leeoniya 10y ago
    > If you can run a video game engine in the browser you can run anything no
    - colordrops 10y ago
      enlighten us
      - leeoniya 10y ago
        ok, assuming your request is not sarcastic: - operating systems - hardware drivers - a networking stack - trading algorithms - fighter jet firmware - ultra low latency DSP - processing data from LHC collisions or imaging satellites. - etc - etc - etc just because webgl enables fast gpu processing (by basically writing a small subset of C that is shader code) doesnt now mean the web platform can be used for evetything.
        colordrops 10y ago
        The implication was applications. But even then, everything on your list is emphatically not true: - operating systems Ironically Linux was one of the first things to ever be compiled to run in the browser using empscripten. - hardware drivers Linux doesn't run without hardware drivers. In this case, the hardware drivers were wrapping JS FFIs. - a networking stack Yes you can. - trading algorithms Why not? - fighter jet firmware It's not a fighter jet, but the SpaceX Dragon 2 space capsule's UI is built using Chromium. - ultra low latency DSP Why not? - processing data from LHC collisions or imaging satellites. Why not?

mattnewton 10y ago

Monocultures develop because of corporate backing. The web being open and unclaimed is what leads to the great diversity. As someone who does both server and JavaScript development, the tools are not bad. Often times they solve real problems well.

quadrupleslap 10y ago
That's silly - if anything it's the other way around. Web tools have a ridiculous degree of corporate backing, especially with the countless libraries from Facebook and Google (React, Angular, Go, Dart, Flow, IMMUTABLE, etc.), and even Microsoft with TypeScript and others. Meanwhile, Make and friends don't have any corporate backing.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Plus IE and Chrome, fwiw
- mattnewton 10y ago
  None of them can lay claim to the web though, contrasted with other ui platforms like windows, ios, etc.
camgunz 10y ago
The web is pretty much corporate. All the major tools are built by major corporations, all the browsers are developed by major corporations (with the exception of Firefox, but Mozilla gets most of its money from major corporations) all the major web players are major corporations, all the major web monetization is rented by corporations. The web's no longer an open platform. Yeah you can put up a blog on your own server using only FOSS. But if you want to drive traffic to it, you're using a huge corporate ad network or some SEO company. If you want to scale it, you're using a huge corporate cloud. If you want to make money on it, you're using a huge corporate ad network.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  Firefox started out as Netscape so you can trace it back to big company.