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Sorry dude, I'm going to have to step in; you're being too strong in your counter attitude. I've been writing and teaching JavaScript professionally for many ye

Sorry dude, I'm going to have to step in; you're being too strong in your counter attitude. I've been writing and teaching JavaScript professionally for many years, and while I don't hate the language, I don't blame those who do. After learning and using a statically typed language, it becomes absurd how much effort you have to put in to debug a JavaScript type error – a problem that is amplified by the language design. What happens when you add 1 + undefined? Other dynamic languages make the sane choice of throwing an error immediately. JavaScript, however, silently gives you back NaN and continues chugging along. By the time a "real" error happens, you're stack traces away from the cause. What happens when you call a function f with one argument when it expects two? Other languages would throw immediately. Instead, JavaScript silently sweeps in an undefined and continues chugging along. Combine that with the other flaw I mentioned, and your runtime error will, again, be distant from the true cause. There's a reason TypeScript is getting insanely popular. It's the only way to code large JavaScript projects and stay sane.

the_cat_kittles 9y ago
you are entitled to your opinion, and i appreciate that you offer it. and those are legitimate gripes. ive written it professionally for many years as well. there are alot of nice things about javascript as well, so in general i like the language. alot of what i read in the initial answer is a guy who wants to show he is a member of the cool kids club by hating on javascript. its so lame.
- simplify 9y ago
  Try to be more charitable by seeing it from their point of view. Imagine being used to a language that helps you be rapidly productive and shields you from a huge catalog of mistakes. But one day you're forced to use JavaScript, and suddenly you've got nothing. It'd be like driving in a doorless jeep with no seatbelts on a high rise highway with no guard rails. Sure you can do what you want, and even in some nice, clever ways. But there are so many ways to hurt yourself, and no natural protections to prevent it. To put it another way, it's like throwing a frontend developer into the world of C. Suddenly you have to be aware of and correctly manage your memory explicitly, whereas before you were safely protected from having to think about it. Lastly, not everyone can voice their opinions so well. Communication is a difficult thing, and understanding what you're trying to communicate more so. If someone says they hate something, it's not always baseless. Instead of jumping to name-calling, have more patience in trying to understand why.
  - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
    this is a good characterization of what causes people confusion, and i think the parallel with people going to c from js is totally right. i experienced that myself. its a great way to put it and i will probably use it, thanks! the second point about being more understanding surely applies more to the person proudly hating a language with no constructive support about why, and little evidence of an effort to overcome the language's obstacles. sure, i dont know everything about this person, but i take the comment at face value, which seems to be the norm. maybe calling them out on it isnt helpful? i dont know, but it didn't seem that bad.
    - simplify 9y ago
      If the hate were towards a person, I would completely agree with you. But OP is only hating JavaScript-the-tool, so I have no contempt towards his opinion. In contrast, if OP were hating on JavaScript programmers, then your indignation would be completely justified. But he's not, and I admit to holding a similar position: I hate C++ and prefer to never lay eyes on it again, but I have nothing against C++ programmers :) The difference between C++ and JS is C++ is less forced upon someone's career as the only language to work with.
      - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
        thats a good distinction, and i suppose its defensible. but imagine you are a trumpet player, and a pianist walks by and says "i hate that non-instrument trumpet" unprovoked. no one is wrong to hate the trumpet. but saying it to a trumpet player, and then saying they aren't even a musician (implied by "non-language"), is going to catch heat. and its undeniably true that javascript has got loads of warts. i mean, look no further than "javascript: the good parts" as perhaps the most recommended book. (i guess you already know this, but for the maybe 1 other person reading this...) but despite that, i enjoy the hell out of writing good js, and love that people can use what you make by going to web page. and w/r/t the warts, i feel that if they were corrected, my js life woulnd't change much at all. so when people point to the warts as evidence that its a bad language, all i can say is that while they are obviously bad, they dont end up mattering to me. thats clearly not true of everyone, but id bet its true alot. because of this, i find it pretty easy to spot people who are excited to hate js because they are pretty sure its a safe thing to hate and it will make them look in the know. i mean, i was guilty of this when i was younger with mysql and php. and yes, people being "forced" to use js is surely contributing to the hate, probably the same way people hate having to use css. they look at them as afterthoughts, but its funny because in a lot of cases, its like the main thing that needs work. i just wonder why people cling to the idea that "real programming" has a certain look, when being good at js and css is super helpful and important to good web projects. i suppose we are arguing for the same thing- basically open-mindedness and willingness to learn.
jmull 9y ago
(just going' down this rabbit hole with you all) The problem I have with static typing (as widely implemented) is it solves little problems at the cost of arbitrary inflexibility which ends up rippling through a code base. And the little problems are better solved in other ways. E.g., unit tests and the like catch type errors on the way to validating that your code actually does what you think it should do. Static typing also isn't useful when dealing with data that moves through distributed systems. You know, like pretty much all the data. The static types you had at compile time are fundamentally not related to the data you are processing at run time and static types don't equip you to deal with that very well. Systems map "wild" incoming data to the internal static types but the static type environments strongly encourage this to happen early, which is often not the right place.
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  > The problem I have with static typing (as widely implemented) Mainstream type systems are best ignored. If it doesn't have sum types, it's not a good type system. If it doesn't have generics, it's not a good type system.
  - jmull 9y ago
    More flexible static type systems can help, but they don't address the fundamental problem that they are trying to make a strong statement at development time about something that isn't known until runtime. This pushes dealing with the problem (of what if something isn't the expected type/is malformed/is missing/is incomplete) to the wrong place, causing unnecessary complexity, dependencies and bugs.
    - loup-vaillant 9y ago
      Give me an example of a correct program you actually want to write, that a decent static type system. I do have examples of correct programs that almost no static type checker will accept, but I don't want to write those programs. For instance: if true then 1 else "one" This is an expression of type int, that yields the value 1. But I don't want to write such crap, because of (i) dead code, and (ii) mismatched types between the the branches (one is an int, the other is a string).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

the_cat_kittles 9y ago

you are entitled to your opinion, and i appreciate that you offer it. and those are legitimate gripes. ive written it professionally for many years as well. there are alot of nice things about javascript as well, so in general i like the language. alot of what i read in the initial answer is a guy who wants to show he is a member of the cool kids club by hating on javascript. its so lame.

simplify 9y ago
Try to be more charitable by seeing it from their point of view. Imagine being used to a language that helps you be rapidly productive and shields you from a huge catalog of mistakes. But one day you're forced to use JavaScript, and suddenly you've got nothing. It'd be like driving in a doorless jeep with no seatbelts on a high rise highway with no guard rails. Sure you can do what you want, and even in some nice, clever ways. But there are so many ways to hurt yourself, and no natural protections to prevent it. To put it another way, it's like throwing a frontend developer into the world of C. Suddenly you have to be aware of and correctly manage your memory explicitly, whereas before you were safely protected from having to think about it. Lastly, not everyone can voice their opinions so well. Communication is a difficult thing, and understanding what you're trying to communicate more so. If someone says they hate something, it's not always baseless. Instead of jumping to name-calling, have more patience in trying to understand why.
- the_cat_kittles 9y ago
  this is a good characterization of what causes people confusion, and i think the parallel with people going to c from js is totally right. i experienced that myself. its a great way to put it and i will probably use it, thanks! the second point about being more understanding surely applies more to the person proudly hating a language with no constructive support about why, and little evidence of an effort to overcome the language's obstacles. sure, i dont know everything about this person, but i take the comment at face value, which seems to be the norm. maybe calling them out on it isnt helpful? i dont know, but it didn't seem that bad.
  - simplify 9y ago
    If the hate were towards a person, I would completely agree with you. But OP is only hating JavaScript-the-tool, so I have no contempt towards his opinion. In contrast, if OP were hating on JavaScript programmers, then your indignation would be completely justified. But he's not, and I admit to holding a similar position: I hate C++ and prefer to never lay eyes on it again, but I have nothing against C++ programmers :) The difference between C++ and JS is C++ is less forced upon someone's career as the only language to work with.
    - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
      thats a good distinction, and i suppose its defensible. but imagine you are a trumpet player, and a pianist walks by and says "i hate that non-instrument trumpet" unprovoked. no one is wrong to hate the trumpet. but saying it to a trumpet player, and then saying they aren't even a musician (implied by "non-language"), is going to catch heat. and its undeniably true that javascript has got loads of warts. i mean, look no further than "javascript: the good parts" as perhaps the most recommended book. (i guess you already know this, but for the maybe 1 other person reading this...) but despite that, i enjoy the hell out of writing good js, and love that people can use what you make by going to web page. and w/r/t the warts, i feel that if they were corrected, my js life woulnd't change much at all. so when people point to the warts as evidence that its a bad language, all i can say is that while they are obviously bad, they dont end up mattering to me. thats clearly not true of everyone, but id bet its true alot. because of this, i find it pretty easy to spot people who are excited to hate js because they are pretty sure its a safe thing to hate and it will make them look in the know. i mean, i was guilty of this when i was younger with mysql and php. and yes, people being "forced" to use js is surely contributing to the hate, probably the same way people hate having to use css. they look at them as afterthoughts, but its funny because in a lot of cases, its like the main thing that needs work. i just wonder why people cling to the idea that "real programming" has a certain look, when being good at js and css is super helpful and important to good web projects. i suppose we are arguing for the same thing- basically open-mindedness and willingness to learn.

jmull 9y ago

(just going' down this rabbit hole with you all) The problem I have with static typing (as widely implemented) is it solves little problems at the cost of arbitrary inflexibility which ends up rippling through a code base. And the little problems are better solved in other ways. E.g., unit tests and the like catch type errors on the way to validating that your code actually does what you think it should do. Static typing also isn't useful when dealing with data that moves through distributed systems. You know, like pretty much all the data. The static types you had at compile time are fundamentally not related to the data you are processing at run time and static types don't equip you to deal with that very well. Systems map "wild" incoming data to the internal static types but the static type environments strongly encourage this to happen early, which is often not the right place.

loup-vaillant 9y ago
> The problem I have with static typing (as widely implemented) Mainstream type systems are best ignored. If it doesn't have sum types, it's not a good type system. If it doesn't have generics, it's not a good type system.
- jmull 9y ago
  More flexible static type systems can help, but they don't address the fundamental problem that they are trying to make a strong statement at development time about something that isn't known until runtime. This pushes dealing with the problem (of what if something isn't the expected type/is malformed/is missing/is incomplete) to the wrong place, causing unnecessary complexity, dependencies and bugs.
  - loup-vaillant 9y ago
    Give me an example of a correct program you actually want to write, that a decent static type system. I do have examples of correct programs that almost no static type checker will accept, but I don't want to write those programs. For instance: if true then 1 else "one" This is an expression of type int, that yields the value 1. But I don't want to write such crap, because of (i) dead code, and (ii) mismatched types between the the branches (one is an int, the other is a string).

deleted 9y ago

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