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javascript is insanely popular and its obviously shitty. popularity correlates very lightly with quality.

by wayn3 9y ago

narimiran 9y ago
That might be true, but I'm more interested in reasons behind it. Surely it isn't something like "well, this seems like high quality, therefore I will not use it".
- wayn3 9y ago
  i didnt say that people dont use it BECAUSE its good. that its good simply doesnt matter to them. almost nobody is using erlang. one of the best languages out there.
  - eddieroger 9y ago
    Betamax was superior to VHS. VHS won. Best is only one aspect. As was said elsewhere here a few times, functional programming is a different paradigm for most people, and learning new stuff is hard, especially when deadlines are at play.
    - hota_mazi 9y ago
      > Betamax was superior to VHS. Actually, that's a myth. One of the reasons why Betamax lost is because a tape could only contain one hour of film, so you needed at least two tapes for a single movie. VHS didn't have this limitation.
neoeldex 9y ago
What's so shitty of javascript? From what I've heard is that people's opinion has changed about that. Javascript is evolving, and so is the ecosystem.
- sametmax 9y ago
  Js was a terrible language with a great platform. Now it's a terrible languages, with a lot a make up to make it look decent, and an a powerful and rich yet very unfriendly and unstable ecosystem. The only reason js has any success at all is the web.
- JepZ 9y ago
  At its core Javascript is a good language. Some of the problems come from the fact that at its core it is a functional language, but for years it was marketed as object oriented. And when you look at the language and expect something object oriented or procedural then you will see a very bad language. Another aspect is the fact that many of the Javascript's problems were actually not problems of the language itself but of the environment around it, like DOM and AJAX implementations in different browsers. Besides those major problems, the language itself has some minor problems. But as you pointed out the language has a very active ecosystem around it, which creates at least 5 solutions to every problem. But many solutions involve new languages which compile to javascript. So practically the problems are solved but the theoretical use case of writing plain Javascript is still a little problematic.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    At the core JS combines dynamic and weak typing. It is not even object oriented, so instead it is commonly used with the prototype approach. It is not a functional language either as functions can define global variables, therefore they aren't actually functions. And defining global state is the default behaviour.
agounaris 9y ago
Users don't care about imperative, functional, object oriented or what coffee you drink in the morning... stop calling languages shitty and get some shit done with the language you feel more comfortable with. We don't code for the shake of coding.
- wayn3 9y ago
  Doesn't change the fact that javascript is shit.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Very deployable but bad still as new versions are not widely available while old ones are crippled. This is why there have been so many languages built on top of it.
wslh 9y ago
Node.JS specifically has a lot of libraries in certain domains not available, with the same maturity, in other programming languages. For example, in the cryptocurrency space there are good libraries (e.g. Ethereum web3 support) but when you try to use similar ones in Python they don't have the same level of support.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  And when you use Java you can actually access even more libraries that do not exist in JS world. Including Ethereum web3 support. It even has a much more stable runtime. Why did you choose JS again?
  - wslh 9y ago
    You can check by yourself that the web3j doesn't have the same capabilities of the official web3 version: https://github.com/web3j/web3j/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/web3j/web3j/wiki/Roadmap I am not arguing against Java, just saying that there are tons of libraries written for Node not available in other programming languages. Another example is the BitPay infrastructure.

javascript is insanely popular and its obviously shitty. popularity correlates very lightly with quality.

by wayn3 9y ago

javascript is insanely popular and its obviously shitty. popularity correlates very lightly with quality.

That might be true, but I'm more interested in reasons behind it. Surely it isn't something like "well, this seems like high quality, therefore I will not use it".

wayn3 9y ago
i didnt say that people dont use it BECAUSE its good. that its good simply doesnt matter to them. almost nobody is using erlang. one of the best languages out there.
- eddieroger 9y ago
  Betamax was superior to VHS. VHS won. Best is only one aspect. As was said elsewhere here a few times, functional programming is a different paradigm for most people, and learning new stuff is hard, especially when deadlines are at play.
  - hota_mazi 9y ago
    > Betamax was superior to VHS. Actually, that's a myth. One of the reasons why Betamax lost is because a tape could only contain one hour of film, so you needed at least two tapes for a single movie. VHS didn't have this limitation.

neoeldex 9y ago

What's so shitty of javascript? From what I've heard is that people's opinion has changed about that. Javascript is evolving, and so is the ecosystem.

sametmax 9y ago
Js was a terrible language with a great platform. Now it's a terrible languages, with a lot a make up to make it look decent, and an a powerful and rich yet very unfriendly and unstable ecosystem. The only reason js has any success at all is the web.
JepZ 9y ago
At its core Javascript is a good language. Some of the problems come from the fact that at its core it is a functional language, but for years it was marketed as object oriented. And when you look at the language and expect something object oriented or procedural then you will see a very bad language. Another aspect is the fact that many of the Javascript's problems were actually not problems of the language itself but of the environment around it, like DOM and AJAX implementations in different browsers. Besides those major problems, the language itself has some minor problems. But as you pointed out the language has a very active ecosystem around it, which creates at least 5 solutions to every problem. But many solutions involve new languages which compile to javascript. So practically the problems are solved but the theoretical use case of writing plain Javascript is still a little problematic.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  At the core JS combines dynamic and weak typing. It is not even object oriented, so instead it is commonly used with the prototype approach. It is not a functional language either as functions can define global variables, therefore they aren't actually functions. And defining global state is the default behaviour.

agounaris 9y ago

Users don't care about imperative, functional, object oriented or what coffee you drink in the morning... stop calling languages shitty and get some shit done with the language you feel more comfortable with. We don't code for the shake of coding.

wayn3 9y ago
Doesn't change the fact that javascript is shit.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Very deployable but bad still as new versions are not widely available while old ones are crippled. This is why there have been so many languages built on top of it.

wslh 9y ago

Node.JS specifically has a lot of libraries in certain domains not available, with the same maturity, in other programming languages. For example, in the cryptocurrency space there are good libraries (e.g. Ethereum web3 support) but when you try to use similar ones in Python they don't have the same level of support.

AstralStorm 9y ago
And when you use Java you can actually access even more libraries that do not exist in JS world. Including Ethereum web3 support. It even has a much more stable runtime. Why did you choose JS again?
- wslh 9y ago
  You can check by yourself that the web3j doesn't have the same capabilities of the official web3 version: https://github.com/web3j/web3j/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/web3j/web3j/wiki/Roadmap I am not arguing against Java, just saying that there are tons of libraries written for Node not available in other programming languages. Another example is the BitPay infrastructure.