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This summarizes everything about the JavaScript ecosystem, so it shouldn't really surprise React users that there is no logic behind the community's behavior.

This summarizes everything about the JavaScript ecosystem, so it shouldn't really surprise React users that there is no logic behind the community's behavior. People have finally succeeded in making JavaScript an important development platform by sheer force of will, insisting that JavaScript must become important in order to justify their adoption of the fad. Before this critical mass was attained, there was no real reason to use JS whenever the option was available, and virtually everyone who adopted Node.js and friends was doing it "just to [do] it", in service to the fad kicked off by Google's promotion of Chrome/V8. Consider that prior to V8, JavaScript was so disliked that the only way to get someone to read a book about it was to name it "JavaScript: The Good Parts". The coder would be surprised to hear that anyone thought JavaScript had any good parts, and would want to figure out what they were, so that his/her days spent in client-side hell would go just a little smoother. Then Google released Chrome with V8, some people thought this meant JavaScript was cool now, and it's snowballed from there.

asherwebb 9y ago
Javascript is important because it runs on billions of devices - more devices can process javascript than any other language. Being the most used programming language in the world makes it an important development platform by default.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  While it may be true that JavaScript has had a large installed base for many years, that installed environment was only capable of operating within the context of a single page load, as long as the browser was open and active, and really was only useful for manipulating the DOM (and JavaScript was a sorry platform even within that ultra-narrow scope). Node.js changed things by making the platform available on the backend, allowing programs to live longer, but the notion that JS was "important" as a general development solution is incorrect. It certainly was not the "native" or obvious solution for anything beyond manipulating page UI, and this remains the case for the overwhelming majority of the "billions" of devices with JS execution environments. It is still harder to configure Node.js for use on a server than something like PHP. When I say an "important development platform", I mean that from the perspective of practical use of the technologist, in the sense that the platform is can be expected to host projects that are recognized as clear leaders within a generally applicable space, strongly motivating adoption of the underlying development platform if not already adopted.
coldtea 9y ago
Or you know, instead of that content-less juvenile rant, we could actually talk about the merits and the disadvantages of JS as a platform like real software engineers. For example you've missed facts like: 1) Javascript as a language is not really that worse or better than any other popular language. C++ has its complexity issues, C has its undefined behavior and foot-guns, PHP, Python and Ruby have their share of warts, Java has slow progress and the crappy over engineering ecosystem, etc. It's a dynamic language with crappy coercion rules and a few bad decisions, but also great expressiveness. 2) Javascript has great vendor support, and the fastest dynamic JITs and interpreters bar none, not from one, but for 4 major vendors (Apple, Google, MS and Mozilla). Python, PHP, Ruby, et al don't even come close, even with things like PyPy. 3) Javascript is the default language of the web, the most popular delivery platform today. 4) Javascript has huge library support and tons of packages. 5) Javascript has incorporated lots of advanced concepts (for popular, non-academic languages), from generators and proxies to async/await. >Then Google released Chrome with V8, some people thought this meant JavaScript was cool now, and it's snowballed from there. Webkit, v8 and Mozilla's JS JIT were released within months of each other, and have been in work for years before. So this has nothing with Google releasing v8 -- the industry in general wanted faster JS execution. In fact TraceMonkey (Mozilla's JIT) was the first to be released. If any Google action was relevant to this, it was the popularization of AJAX (which MS introduced) through apps like Gmail that set the future direction for the web.
- tomc1985 9y ago
  The "contentless" "juvenile" rant matches my memory of the JS scene at that time. And while certainly the JS scene nowadays is bigger, it is the opinion of a lot of veteran devs that the scene is a mess and that people are crazy. It's taken a decade for JS to mature as a language and community to even be considered at-parity for C, C++, Python, or Ruby. Equivalence didn't even enter the picture until recently. Why is it most newbie-level training materials and most language discussions nowadays seem to center around products ("React", "Redux", "Angular", etc) than techniques? How ironic given the algorithms fetish that is so common in hiring. How many of these devs can function without a framework? What does that say about the choices made by the community? What's funny is that JS -- even ten years ago -- wasn't that bad of a language (weird, definitely, but I wouldn't call it bad); unfortunately it was strapped to various messes of HTML engines and competing standards. JavaScript hell ten years ago was shimmying browser features and figuring out how to do that thing that jquery replaced with $(document).ready(). Fighting against the language itself was much less common.

asherwebb 9y ago

Javascript is important because it runs on billions of devices - more devices can process javascript than any other language. Being the most used programming language in the world makes it an important development platform by default.

cookiecaper 9y ago
While it may be true that JavaScript has had a large installed base for many years, that installed environment was only capable of operating within the context of a single page load, as long as the browser was open and active, and really was only useful for manipulating the DOM (and JavaScript was a sorry platform even within that ultra-narrow scope). Node.js changed things by making the platform available on the backend, allowing programs to live longer, but the notion that JS was "important" as a general development solution is incorrect. It certainly was not the "native" or obvious solution for anything beyond manipulating page UI, and this remains the case for the overwhelming majority of the "billions" of devices with JS execution environments. It is still harder to configure Node.js for use on a server than something like PHP. When I say an "important development platform", I mean that from the perspective of practical use of the technologist, in the sense that the platform is can be expected to host projects that are recognized as clear leaders within a generally applicable space, strongly motivating adoption of the underlying development platform if not already adopted.

coldtea 9y ago

Or you know, instead of that content-less juvenile rant, we could actually talk about the merits and the disadvantages of JS as a platform like real software engineers. For example you've missed facts like: 1) Javascript as a language is not really that worse or better than any other popular language. C++ has its complexity issues, C has its undefined behavior and foot-guns, PHP, Python and Ruby have their share of warts, Java has slow progress and the crappy over engineering ecosystem, etc. It's a dynamic language with crappy coercion rules and a few bad decisions, but also great expressiveness. 2) Javascript has great vendor support, and the fastest dynamic JITs and interpreters bar none, not from one, but for 4 major vendors (Apple, Google, MS and Mozilla). Python, PHP, Ruby, et al don't even come close, even with things like PyPy. 3) Javascript is the default language of the web, the most popular delivery platform today. 4) Javascript has huge library support and tons of packages. 5) Javascript has incorporated lots of advanced concepts (for popular, non-academic languages), from generators and proxies to async/await. >Then Google released Chrome with V8, some people thought this meant JavaScript was cool now, and it's snowballed from there. Webkit, v8 and Mozilla's JS JIT were released within months of each other, and have been in work for years before. So this has nothing with Google releasing v8 -- the industry in general wanted faster JS execution. In fact TraceMonkey (Mozilla's JIT) was the first to be released. If any Google action was relevant to this, it was the popularization of AJAX (which MS introduced) through apps like Gmail that set the future direction for the web.

tomc1985 9y ago
The "contentless" "juvenile" rant matches my memory of the JS scene at that time. And while certainly the JS scene nowadays is bigger, it is the opinion of a lot of veteran devs that the scene is a mess and that people are crazy. It's taken a decade for JS to mature as a language and community to even be considered at-parity for C, C++, Python, or Ruby. Equivalence didn't even enter the picture until recently. Why is it most newbie-level training materials and most language discussions nowadays seem to center around products ("React", "Redux", "Angular", etc) than techniques? How ironic given the algorithms fetish that is so common in hiring. How many of these devs can function without a framework? What does that say about the choices made by the community? What's funny is that JS -- even ten years ago -- wasn't that bad of a language (weird, definitely, but I wouldn't call it bad); unfortunately it was strapped to various messes of HTML engines and competing standards. JavaScript hell ten years ago was shimmying browser features and figuring out how to do that thing that jquery replaced with $(document).ready(). Fighting against the language itself was much less common.