8 ms·

I think that much of these criticism relate to the implementation, and the runtime (i.e. browser) rather than the language itself. As a scripting language for a

by rusk 8y ago

I think that much of these criticism relate to the implementation, and the runtime (i.e. browser) rather than the language itself. As a scripting language for a browser environment it's pretty good. Modern variants have lots of lovely language features and tools like babel mean you can use a lot of these new features without sacrificing backward compatibility. The threadless/nonblocking model is "interesting" but in my opinion its wholly suitable for user-oriented scripting as it forces a style of development that doesn't block. The null/undefined thing actually makes sense to me. The concept of "Null" is a swirling vortex of uncertainty in most languages and it's nice to see it get some more nuanced treatment. There's something about the bloody-minded pragmatism of javascript that appeals too ... it's very much a language that has evolved from the bottom up based on need, and much of it is very much community driven. You see problems solved in interesting and unusual ways that you mightn't see in a more stringently stewarded language. I wouldn't use it for everything. I wouldn't prescribe it for beginners to programming either. But it's great for what it does. I like lots of other languages too, but I respect their applicable limitations. It's a nice language.

egeozcan 8y ago
There are a lot of valid criticisms against JavaScript. This is a fact. It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible. I doubt anyone calls JS terrible on its own merits. There is a lot of hate against the runtime (edit: I mean the browser, not JS VMs or interpreters). The runtime enforces JS and the runtime itself is enforced everywhere. There is also this new flow of very inexperienced developers who seem to think JS (and perhaps Ruby) is the only language. This is very similar to the hate PHP got. Pragmatic choices vs experienced having their "I told you so" moment when they see "sql_srsly_escape_string_this_time(...". All this makes a lot of people react emotionally and makes talking about JS itself (like many other mass-adopted technology) very hard. Is JS nice? Yeah, as my personal opinion - but we can all say that it is good enough, evidenced by the ecosystem and the things people create with it.
- anton-107 8y ago
  > It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible I'm wondering what would be an example of a great language? Because we know that there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses
  - tromp 8y ago
    I like to think of Haskell as a great language. It still has its warts (e.g. last [0,1/3..2] > 2), but if you wan't wart free, there's probably nothing beyond lambda calculus. Being the closest thing to lambda calculus with enough syntactic sugar on top to make it practical is a large part of what makes Haskell great.
    - CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
      The one thing that makes Haskell not great is that its understanding is not widely intuitive. People with mathy backgrounds that don't blink at the phrase "lambda calculus" won't consider this, but a lot of people struggle with math. If you can't put it in the hands of a 6th grader (in the public school system with no special tutoring) and have a reasonable chance of it being understood (n.b. I self-taught myself early JavaScript when I was in the 5th grade, and picked up PHP the following year), it won't ever be "great".
      - rusk 8y ago
        Here's a thing about mathy languages too ... I've done a bit of lisp so I'd like to think I kind of get it ... but aren't computers by their very nature "imperative"? i.e. such that C or Pascal perhaps map more naturally to the underlying system? Can these mathy languages (oriented around our rationalist perspective of the world) truly ever be sympathetic to the hardware? What I mean is, nice as these are ... is there always going to be a bit of waste when you use them?
      - the_af 8y ago
        This is the one criticism of Haskell that in my opinion has no merit. Programming languages are not intuitive. They are a learned skill. You know the saying (sometimes said as a joke) "such-and-such language failed because it didn't have C-like syntax" -- but C-like syntax is NOT intuitive! Reading C code is a learned skill. Maybe it could be amended to "since many programmers learned to program using languages with a syntax inspired by C, wildly different syntaxes learned at a later stage are more difficult to them", which is a more reasonable proposition. This could be fixed by teaching programmers other languages early on. Haskell is no more or less intuitive than JavaScript. It's just different.

by rusk 8y ago

egeozcan 8y ago

There are a lot of valid criticisms against JavaScript. This is a fact. It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible. I doubt anyone calls JS terrible on its own merits. There is a lot of hate against the runtime (edit: I mean the browser, not JS VMs or interpreters). The runtime enforces JS and the runtime itself is enforced everywhere. There is also this new flow of very inexperienced developers who seem to think JS (and perhaps Ruby) is the only language. This is very similar to the hate PHP got. Pragmatic choices vs experienced having their "I told you so" moment when they see "sql_srsly_escape_string_this_time(...". All this makes a lot of people react emotionally and makes talking about JS itself (like many other mass-adopted technology) very hard. Is JS nice? Yeah, as my personal opinion - but we can all say that it is good enough, evidenced by the ecosystem and the things people create with it.

anton-107 8y ago
> It's not a great language (clearly demonstrated by the discussion about it being good or not) but it's not terrible I'm wondering what would be an example of a great language? Because we know that there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses
- tromp 8y ago
  I like to think of Haskell as a great language. It still has its warts (e.g. last [0,1/3..2] > 2), but if you wan't wart free, there's probably nothing beyond lambda calculus. Being the closest thing to lambda calculus with enough syntactic sugar on top to make it practical is a large part of what makes Haskell great.
  - CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
    The one thing that makes Haskell not great is that its understanding is not widely intuitive. People with mathy backgrounds that don't blink at the phrase "lambda calculus" won't consider this, but a lot of people struggle with math. If you can't put it in the hands of a 6th grader (in the public school system with no special tutoring) and have a reasonable chance of it being understood (n.b. I self-taught myself early JavaScript when I was in the 5th grade, and picked up PHP the following year), it won't ever be "great".
    - rusk 8y ago
      Here's a thing about mathy languages too ... I've done a bit of lisp so I'd like to think I kind of get it ... but aren't computers by their very nature "imperative"? i.e. such that C or Pascal perhaps map more naturally to the underlying system? Can these mathy languages (oriented around our rationalist perspective of the world) truly ever be sympathetic to the hardware? What I mean is, nice as these are ... is there always going to be a bit of waste when you use them?
    - the_af 8y ago
      This is the one criticism of Haskell that in my opinion has no merit. Programming languages are not intuitive. They are a learned skill. You know the saying (sometimes said as a joke) "such-and-such language failed because it didn't have C-like syntax" -- but C-like syntax is NOT intuitive! Reading C code is a learned skill. Maybe it could be amended to "since many programmers learned to program using languages with a syntax inspired by C, wildly different syntaxes learned at a later stage are more difficult to them", which is a more reasonable proposition. This could be fixed by teaching programmers other languages early on. Haskell is no more or less intuitive than JavaScript. It's just different.