4 ms·

> but almost everybody agrees it is flawed as a language. If that's the future, we are screwed as an industry. What language is not flawed? And why are we "scr

> but almost everybody agrees it is flawed as a language. If that's the future, we are screwed as an industry. What language is not flawed? And why are we "screwed"? I don't get this FUD...there are more important things than language-choice such as dependency management system + community + ecosystem. JS lets you get on with the job and get things done quickly. You need performance - use C/C++ bindings. Its been clear for a long time that JS is the safest long-term choice and is slowly creeping into every other language's castle.

throwaway7645 9y ago
It doesn't bother you that huge portions of our tech stack are sitting on top of layers of terrible language design that our ancestors will have to deal with? Perhaps the parent post is looking more to the future. Of course it all still works, but when you think we could be doing the same job with Lisp, Smalltalk, (insert any non perfect, but much better than JS technology), it does make me cringe a little.
- deleted 9y ago
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- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > that our ancestors will have to deal with You meant descendants? Anyway, they won't. They will throw away the garbage and rewrite anything good they find. Just like we do.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Haha, yes my goof up. I disagree that they will rewrite though. Nobody is willingly rewriting millions of loc.
d13 9y ago
It's flawed because 99.999% of the time your code will work just fine. Job done. Then one day, "undefined is not a function" and your airplane falls out of the air.
- giantsloth 9y ago
  This happens in all languages... look at the Toyota acceleration bug for a real world of example of your hyperbole. They were using MISRA C. Languages dont fix spaghetti, laziness, tight deadlines, bad engineers, etc.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    > This happens in all languages... To some extent, yes, that happens in all languages. To some extent 10^100 and 1 are both numbers. That does not mean you can even compare them.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    I'm not sure you can do spaghetti and still do MISRA C. Doesn't MISRA have some things about goto, cyclomatic complexity, and such?
pdimitar 9y ago
Well, you were right about one thing: you don't get it. ;) Just look at the prototype hell. Look at the quirkiness of the comparison operator. Type inference. The mess piles up extremely quickly. "Disciplined devs don't make those mistakes" is NOT an argument and never was. Decades later, people believing themselves to be godlike C/C++ devs still make stupid mistakes. But I guess learning from the past won't happen for people who fanboy and have a survivorship bias. And have money on the line.

throwaway7645 9y ago

It doesn't bother you that huge portions of our tech stack are sitting on top of layers of terrible language design that our ancestors will have to deal with? Perhaps the parent post is looking more to the future. Of course it all still works, but when you think we could be doing the same job with Lisp, Smalltalk, (insert any non perfect, but much better than JS technology), it does make me cringe a little.

deleted 9y ago
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marcosdumay 9y ago
> that our ancestors will have to deal with You meant descendants? Anyway, they won't. They will throw away the garbage and rewrite anything good they find. Just like we do.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Haha, yes my goof up. I disagree that they will rewrite though. Nobody is willingly rewriting millions of loc.

d13 9y ago

It's flawed because 99.999% of the time your code will work just fine. Job done. Then one day, "undefined is not a function" and your airplane falls out of the air.

giantsloth 9y ago
This happens in all languages... look at the Toyota acceleration bug for a real world of example of your hyperbole. They were using MISRA C. Languages dont fix spaghetti, laziness, tight deadlines, bad engineers, etc.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > This happens in all languages... To some extent, yes, that happens in all languages. To some extent 10^100 and 1 are both numbers. That does not mean you can even compare them.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  I'm not sure you can do spaghetti and still do MISRA C. Doesn't MISRA have some things about goto, cyclomatic complexity, and such?

pdimitar 9y ago

Well, you were right about one thing: you don't get it. ;) Just look at the prototype hell. Look at the quirkiness of the comparison operator. Type inference. The mess piles up extremely quickly. "Disciplined devs don't make those mistakes" is NOT an argument and never was. Decades later, people believing themselves to be godlike C/C++ devs still make stupid mistakes. But I guess learning from the past won't happen for people who fanboy and have a survivorship bias. And have money on the line.