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> "The tools are not the same on every platform." Any common examples? > "It’s not very idiomatic for JavaScript projects to use Make." While I agree that po
by dblotsky 9y ago
> "The tools are not the same on every platform."
Any common examples?
> "It’s not very idiomatic for JavaScript projects to use Make."
While I agree that popularity is a factor in picking a tool, it shouldn't be a deciding factor. Going by popularity is precisely how we end up with a new Build System of the Year(TM) every few years. The fact that we've gone through 4 fairly prominent tools (Gulp, Grunt, Broccoli, Webpack), all of which contending to "fix" the previous, and none of which have proper DAG or incremental builds (which Make has had for decades) is damning evidence.
In other words, I think Make could be (and I wish it was) idiomatic for JS.
- hungerstrike 9y agoThis comment points out the kind of problems that can occur just on Unix systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485637 And then there’s Windows... Anyway, the fact that things change quickly in JS-land is more of a testament to how popular it is than anything else IMO. If C were used in the same environments as JS, I’m sure that you'd see just as much churn.
- gonvaled 9y agoC is used in a lot of platforms. Js only in the browser (thankfully mostly converged) and in node.
- hungerstrike 9y agoJavaScript is in the server, browser, mobile apps, desktop apps and embedded devices. Basically, it’s used everywhere that C is used and then some.
- gonvaled 9y agoWhat is the runtime? Always the same. More than C? Ha! The platform where your js is running is probably written in C!
- hungerstrike 9y agoPffffft. Nobody wants to touch C these days. That's why many, many, many, many, many more people are writing server, browser, desktop and mobile apps with JS and not C.
- dblotsky 9y agohttps://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
- hungerstrike 9y agohttp://githut.info/ http://githut.info/
- dblotsky 9y agoThere's way more to software engineering than GitHub. Example: every company that hosts their own code repositories. The TIOBE index, while not entirely accurate either, does reflect usage by a much more broad set of engineers.
- hungerstrike 9y agoHere's another survey that shows what kinds of languages programmers actually want to use and JS tops the list while C comes in below even Bash/Shell programming and PHP.
- hungerstrike 9y agoIncorrect. TIOBE shows you what companies are making their employees do. Github numbers show you what programmers actually want to do. However, looking at job ads these days I hardly see any for C relative to JavaScript.
- dblotsky 9y agoMy point was that TIOBE is simply more all-encompassing than GitHut. It gives you a clearer picture of the most searched programming languages, which includes both GitHub as well as non-GitHub stats. Also, GitHut counts repositories, not lines of code. Not sure which of C or JS has more lines of code being written every year, but my guess is that it's C (Java might have more than both though).
- dblotsky 9y ago> "Basically, it’s used everywhere that C is used and then some." It's the other way around. Every JavaScript program is run by a C/C++ program.
- quietbritishjim 9y agoBut if you consider browsers to be a "platform", which I think they are in fairness, then the GP comment could still apply. Whether the browser is written in C is pretty irrelevant to whether it can host it.
- dblotsky 9y agoI conjecture that an upper-level "platform" that's on top of a lower-level "platform", for some definition of "platform", will be less varied and fragmented than the lower-level one.
- asveikau 9y agoYou can use gnu make on platforms where the usual make is not gnu. For example I install it from ports on *bsd and have an msys gnu make on Windows.