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Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how

Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives.

pjmlp 9y ago
Bulb effect.
notheguyouthink 9y ago
> Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. No one _(with any sense)_ thinks JS is somehow going to be deleted. Nor am I saying JS is going anywhere - if anything, I'm not even talking about JS, I'm not sure why you pointed out that JS is going to exist afterwards. Do I misunderstand your point? > Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives. Well to be clear, there isn't alternatives, if the user wants a shared tooling, shared libraries, shared language. I don't think Node became popular years ago because JavaScript is so wooping awesome. Hell, when NodeJS came out transpilers (CoffeeScript/etc) were massively popular because of how much many people hated JavaScript. Node was popular despite many peoples dislike for the language. I worked for ~4 years at a company who built an entire platform in CoffeeScript, as did a few other companies we worked with. That's not to say that JavaScript is terrible, ES6+ is becoming really nice. I'm just saying, Node's popularity is clearly not evidence of JavaScript being awesome. Node is a symptom of people wanting a singular environment, and not having any choice about JavaScript.
- scottmf 9y ago
  Perhaps I misunderstood your point. You seemed to ask why people would want to use JS once WASM effectively puts it on a level playing field with other languages.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    Ah nah, I meant more like - if you wanted to, why wouldn't you. Not that anything is explicitly better than anything else. It sounded like people were claiming that WASM cannot dethrone JS, that JS will always be the language of the web, etcetc. So my question was more.. Why? Personally I don't think it is (clearly haha). Once DOM access is reasonable, I think many (myself included) will move away quickly. Web frameworks are not that hard, so the existing ecosystem of languages is a bit of a meaningless argument as I see it. Hell, even within JS, the ecosystem is largely isolated solos of code. Eg, sure I can choose between React, Angular, Ember, etcetc - but I wouldn't choose two of them at the same time. The ecosystem in that case only helps me in that I can choose, but they're rarely tools I collectively use. So back to my original point, myself, and I imagine my shop, would make the switch pretty quickly as soon as WASM is viable for our target languages. Viable means page load execution, memory, speed, etc - all variable parameters depending on the project of course.
    - _Tev 9y ago
      > It sounded like people were claiming that WASM cannot dethrone JS, that JS will always be the language of the web, etcetc. So my question was more.. Why? You seem to be missing the biggest (at least to me) advantage of JS - how dumb it is. It's great that beginners don't have much to learn. They do not need any complex environment setup. And even seniors get benefit of easy onboarding. And considering web will always be primarily about UI i.e. high level code writable by any random guy without CS degree, why would JS lose its dominance?
      - notheguyouthink 9y ago
        Being the top language and being the goto might be different though.. although I'm not sure how to properly word the two, but what I mean is: A goto language is the language that most people are going to use because of the benefits for the problem domain. Eg, you're not going to write an embedded device application with a GC language like JS/Py/Go/etc. You're far better off with a low level, low memory and predictable language. Right now, JS is the goto for the web. It's actually not the only "choice", transpilers exist for many languages to JS, but it slows the app down, increases size, etc. So while people have options, the disadvantages of other Langs on the web make JS the goto. Saying that JS will no longer be the goto (or however you want to word it) doesn't mean people will stop using JS any more than embedded systems not using Python hurts Python. But it does mean people have options, and JS is a language of choice now, not requirement. At least, that's my dream - hopefully WASM provides that.

pjmlp 9y ago

Bulb effect.

notheguyouthink 9y ago

> Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. No one _(with any sense)_ thinks JS is somehow going to be deleted. Nor am I saying JS is going anywhere - if anything, I'm not even talking about JS, I'm not sure why you pointed out that JS is going to exist afterwards. Do I misunderstand your point? > Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives. Well to be clear, there isn't alternatives, if the user wants a shared tooling, shared libraries, shared language. I don't think Node became popular years ago because JavaScript is so wooping awesome. Hell, when NodeJS came out transpilers (CoffeeScript/etc) were massively popular because of how much many people hated JavaScript. Node was popular despite many peoples dislike for the language. I worked for ~4 years at a company who built an entire platform in CoffeeScript, as did a few other companies we worked with. That's not to say that JavaScript is terrible, ES6+ is becoming really nice. I'm just saying, Node's popularity is clearly not evidence of JavaScript being awesome. Node is a symptom of people wanting a singular environment, and not having any choice about JavaScript.

scottmf 9y ago
Perhaps I misunderstood your point. You seemed to ask why people would want to use JS once WASM effectively puts it on a level playing field with other languages.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  Ah nah, I meant more like - if you wanted to, why wouldn't you. Not that anything is explicitly better than anything else. It sounded like people were claiming that WASM cannot dethrone JS, that JS will always be the language of the web, etcetc. So my question was more.. Why? Personally I don't think it is (clearly haha). Once DOM access is reasonable, I think many (myself included) will move away quickly. Web frameworks are not that hard, so the existing ecosystem of languages is a bit of a meaningless argument as I see it. Hell, even within JS, the ecosystem is largely isolated solos of code. Eg, sure I can choose between React, Angular, Ember, etcetc - but I wouldn't choose two of them at the same time. The ecosystem in that case only helps me in that I can choose, but they're rarely tools I collectively use. So back to my original point, myself, and I imagine my shop, would make the switch pretty quickly as soon as WASM is viable for our target languages. Viable means page load execution, memory, speed, etc - all variable parameters depending on the project of course.
  - _Tev 9y ago
    > It sounded like people were claiming that WASM cannot dethrone JS, that JS will always be the language of the web, etcetc. So my question was more.. Why? You seem to be missing the biggest (at least to me) advantage of JS - how dumb it is. It's great that beginners don't have much to learn. They do not need any complex environment setup. And even seniors get benefit of easy onboarding. And considering web will always be primarily about UI i.e. high level code writable by any random guy without CS degree, why would JS lose its dominance?
    - notheguyouthink 9y ago
      Being the top language and being the goto might be different though.. although I'm not sure how to properly word the two, but what I mean is: A goto language is the language that most people are going to use because of the benefits for the problem domain. Eg, you're not going to write an embedded device application with a GC language like JS/Py/Go/etc. You're far better off with a low level, low memory and predictable language. Right now, JS is the goto for the web. It's actually not the only "choice", transpilers exist for many languages to JS, but it slows the app down, increases size, etc. So while people have options, the disadvantages of other Langs on the web make JS the goto. Saying that JS will no longer be the goto (or however you want to word it) doesn't mean people will stop using JS any more than embedded systems not using Python hurts Python. But it does mean people have options, and JS is a language of choice now, not requirement. At least, that's my dream - hopefully WASM provides that.