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Javascript is a very handy language, it's held back by all the gymnastics it needs to do to get over browser/www limitations, and an influx of low skill develop

by nukeop 9y ago

Javascript is a very handy language, it's held back by all the gymnastics it needs to do to get over browser/www limitations, and an influx of low skill developers with no diploma.

valuearb 9y ago
Hey, I’ve got no diploma, just 30 years of commercial development. But even I know that all the unit tests in the world can’t paper over the flaws of a typeless scripting language.
reificator 9y ago
Would you rather they be low skill developers with a diploma?
dadvader 9y ago
> it's held back by all the gymnastics it needs to do to get over browser/www limitations, I suppose, but I think it's the javascript "nature" ( dynamic typing along with the scripting style of wanting to be a "swiss knife" to solve all problems ). Javascript, like perl and even C, gives you a lot of rope to hang yourself. And like perl and C, javascript initially seems simple and easy and it deceives you into thinking novices know what they are doing. > and an influx of low skill developers with no diploma. That's true of all languages though. Plenty of incompetent developers at all levels and all languages. I don't think it's a javascript issue.
- tonyarkles 9y ago
  > Plenty of incompetent developers at all levels and all languages. I don't think it's a javascript issue. While that's potentially true, I do suspect that there's a lot fewer, say, Haskell, Clojure, or Elixir developers than there are for some other languages. Not that they don't exist, but it seems unlikely that you'd cross paths with them.
  - tonyarkles 9y ago
    Just realized I meant to say "a lot fewer, say, incompetent..."
    - klibertp 9y ago
      Well, both versions are true, the latter mostly following from the former. With a lower absolute number of developers, the number of incompetent programmers is going to be lower in absolute terms, despite the ratio staying the same as in other languages. But I believe there's a difference in the ratio, too, due to the way Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, etc. programmers learn these languages. Basically, they learn the languages not because someone wants them to (eg. Java, C#, etc.) and not because they have to just to be able to do something they want to do (eg. JavaScript, SQL, etc.). Instead, people learn such languages because they themselves want to, which makes them more probable to delve deeper, learn more and acquire more important skills. Well, that's a conjecture I can't prove and I may be completely wrong on this, it's just what my anecdotal experience suggests.
      - tonyarkles 9y ago
        Totally agree! I think it somewhat comes back to the "Python Paradox": http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html Another part of it is that someone who's incompetent in, e.g. JavaScript, is likely to not make it very far trying to do Clojure. And, again some conjecture, I'd bet that someone who is great at Clojure would write very nice JS. When I was learning Python back in, 2006 or so, I remember someone stating "You can write Java in any language". This was referring to people who wrote Python code with these huge class hierarchies that inherited from stuff all over the place, when a "Pythonic" solution would have just involved a couple of functions.
  - Can_Not 9y ago
    There's orders of magnitudes less developers and jobs available for those languages. I'm only not an elixir developer because there's almost zero elixir jobs.

by nukeop 9y ago

Javascript is a very handy language, it's held back by all the gymnastics it needs to do to get over browser/www limitations, and an influx of low skill developers with no diploma.

valuearb 9y ago

Hey, I’ve got no diploma, just 30 years of commercial development. But even I know that all the unit tests in the world can’t paper over the flaws of a typeless scripting language.

reificator 9y ago

Would you rather they be low skill developers with a diploma?

dadvader 9y ago

> it's held back by all the gymnastics it needs to do to get over browser/www limitations, I suppose, but I think it's the javascript "nature" ( dynamic typing along with the scripting style of wanting to be a "swiss knife" to solve all problems ). Javascript, like perl and even C, gives you a lot of rope to hang yourself. And like perl and C, javascript initially seems simple and easy and it deceives you into thinking novices know what they are doing. > and an influx of low skill developers with no diploma. That's true of all languages though. Plenty of incompetent developers at all levels and all languages. I don't think it's a javascript issue.

tonyarkles 9y ago
> Plenty of incompetent developers at all levels and all languages. I don't think it's a javascript issue. While that's potentially true, I do suspect that there's a lot fewer, say, Haskell, Clojure, or Elixir developers than there are for some other languages. Not that they don't exist, but it seems unlikely that you'd cross paths with them.
- tonyarkles 9y ago
  Just realized I meant to say "a lot fewer, say, incompetent..."
  - klibertp 9y ago
    Well, both versions are true, the latter mostly following from the former. With a lower absolute number of developers, the number of incompetent programmers is going to be lower in absolute terms, despite the ratio staying the same as in other languages. But I believe there's a difference in the ratio, too, due to the way Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, etc. programmers learn these languages. Basically, they learn the languages not because someone wants them to (eg. Java, C#, etc.) and not because they have to just to be able to do something they want to do (eg. JavaScript, SQL, etc.). Instead, people learn such languages because they themselves want to, which makes them more probable to delve deeper, learn more and acquire more important skills. Well, that's a conjecture I can't prove and I may be completely wrong on this, it's just what my anecdotal experience suggests.
    - tonyarkles 9y ago
      Totally agree! I think it somewhat comes back to the "Python Paradox": http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html Another part of it is that someone who's incompetent in, e.g. JavaScript, is likely to not make it very far trying to do Clojure. And, again some conjecture, I'd bet that someone who is great at Clojure would write very nice JS. When I was learning Python back in, 2006 or so, I remember someone stating "You can write Java in any language". This was referring to people who wrote Python code with these huge class hierarchies that inherited from stuff all over the place, when a "Pythonic" solution would have just involved a couple of functions.
- Can_Not 9y ago
  There's orders of magnitudes less developers and jobs available for those languages. I'm only not an elixir developer because there's almost zero elixir jobs.