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I know it's fashionable and popular to hate on JS. No matter what your objections are, if you are frightened of it, you should be scared. It's running in almost

I know it's fashionable and popular to hate on JS. No matter what your objections are, if you are frightened of it, you should be scared. It's running in almost any modern device you own, and a decent chunk of services serving those devices. Even everybody decides to switch to WASM/Go/Python and leave JS in the dust, it'll still zombie on for a good long time. See: PHP.

LaGrange 8y ago
> I know it's fashionable and popular to hate on JS. I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now. I do not remember a time when it wasn't popular to hate JS. If it's a fashion, it's a fashion that literally crossed millennia.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  It was always hated from my experience. It was a flawed language designed in 3 days. There's more people who love it now then before. It's mostly from beginners who learn it at bootcamp as their first/only language.
  - lostcolony 8y ago
    I know Java, Erlang, C/C++, Ruby, Python, Javascript, have dabbled in Scala, Haskell, PHP, Perl, and Racket. Of these, Javascript was actually the last I learned and used professionally. I like Javascript. I hate DOM manipulations in the browser, and browser based differences, but Node on the backend is generally a pleasure to work with, and far, -far- better than most of the languages and ecosystems I've had to deal with. I prefer Erlang (well, and Elixir) for larger projects with complex concurrency/distribution/fault tolerance requirements. Yes, Javascript was always hated. It certainly has some WTF elements to it that deserve some hatred. But for a straightforward, easy to learn, get things done language that doesn't lead to a lot of bloat, doesn't force you to be concerned with things you shouldn't have to be concerned with, etc, it's actually pretty solid, and I suspect a lot of the hatred has to do with the argh of the browser, in which no language will help you.
    - gambler 8y ago
      >I hate DOM manipulations in the browser What exactly is so difficult about DOM manipulation? I honestly don't get why people see it as a problem that warrants zillion badly written frameworks, while other critical language issues are pretty much ignored.
      - thrower123 8y ago
        I think it's a hangover from ten years ago when it actually was a huge pain in the ass to do DOM stuff without jQuery.
      - IggleSniggle 8y ago
        What’s difficult isn’t the DOM itself, it’s that you thread in and out of the DOM with a changing DOM state and with multiple people writing application code. Many of the frameworks / packagers exist to help tame the context switching, since in frontend land you might have business logic that is dependent on a CSS class that may or may not be present at any given moment and might be modified by some other piece of logic. Everything in the DOM is basically a global variable, and any part of the app might manipulate any part of the DOM. Example: Someone wrote CSS that is coupled to a child element (which seemed the clearest way to write it at the time) and someone else comes along to edit the content of the HTML which adds a layer and now your logic is broken even if the CSS still looks right. The frameworks make it easier to avoid that kind of fragile coupling / enforce a consistent way to manage the interaction of JS, CSS, and HTML. All that said, web applications really are an entirely different beast than websites, even if they exist on a spectrum.
        lostcolony 8y ago
        Yep. In any shared development context (or even solo but trying to ensure proper containment of component structure, logic, and design rather than just one ugly hodgepodge), there is no good solution without a framework. And because literally everyone runs into that problem, everyone has created their own framework, which is why there's so many of them. But none of that is an issue on the backend, where there's no DOM considerations. No HTML or CSS either. Just Javascript. And there it's straightforward, succinct, and usually easily understood (usual caveat of bad developers, but compare average Node codebases with average Java codebases).
  - ficklepickle 8y ago
    Same with that Personal Home Page language. No self respecting company would ever use that! Now, all of you, get off my lawn!
  - lonalzarus 8y ago
    It's not my first language, I've been an engineer for 20 years, I've picked it up in the last 5. I can see what accounts for its success, it's responsive and fluid, both in its features and in its evolution which makes it perfect for what the web and emergent technologies need right now. And it's ubiquitous. It won't be important forever, but it is definitely important now.
  - krapp 8y ago
    I feel like there was a period after jQuery came along and before Node and the entire morass of "enterprise" javascript when it wasn't hated so much. The problem with javascript isn't that it's a terrible language per se - it's perfectly adequate for its actual, intended use case (lightweight scripting and DOM access.) The problem is that "flawed language designed in 3 days" is now being used everywhere, and that its ecosystem is a trainwreck of unnecessary complexity tied to a badly designed package manager linked to a proprietary backend.
crimsonalucard 8y ago
It's fashionable to love it according to the numbers and these replies...
- techntoke 8y ago
  Exactly, it's not hated. Almost every coding school and boot camp only teaches JavaScript.
VMG 8y ago
> you should be scared I am

LaGrange 8y ago

> I know it's fashionable and popular to hate on JS. I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now. I do not remember a time when it wasn't popular to hate JS. If it's a fashion, it's a fashion that literally crossed millennia.

crimsonalucard 8y ago
It was always hated from my experience. It was a flawed language designed in 3 days. There's more people who love it now then before. It's mostly from beginners who learn it at bootcamp as their first/only language.
- lostcolony 8y ago
  I know Java, Erlang, C/C++, Ruby, Python, Javascript, have dabbled in Scala, Haskell, PHP, Perl, and Racket. Of these, Javascript was actually the last I learned and used professionally. I like Javascript. I hate DOM manipulations in the browser, and browser based differences, but Node on the backend is generally a pleasure to work with, and far, -far- better than most of the languages and ecosystems I've had to deal with. I prefer Erlang (well, and Elixir) for larger projects with complex concurrency/distribution/fault tolerance requirements. Yes, Javascript was always hated. It certainly has some WTF elements to it that deserve some hatred. But for a straightforward, easy to learn, get things done language that doesn't lead to a lot of bloat, doesn't force you to be concerned with things you shouldn't have to be concerned with, etc, it's actually pretty solid, and I suspect a lot of the hatred has to do with the argh of the browser, in which no language will help you.
  - gambler 8y ago
    >I hate DOM manipulations in the browser What exactly is so difficult about DOM manipulation? I honestly don't get why people see it as a problem that warrants zillion badly written frameworks, while other critical language issues are pretty much ignored.
    - thrower123 8y ago
      I think it's a hangover from ten years ago when it actually was a huge pain in the ass to do DOM stuff without jQuery.
    - IggleSniggle 8y ago
      What’s difficult isn’t the DOM itself, it’s that you thread in and out of the DOM with a changing DOM state and with multiple people writing application code. Many of the frameworks / packagers exist to help tame the context switching, since in frontend land you might have business logic that is dependent on a CSS class that may or may not be present at any given moment and might be modified by some other piece of logic. Everything in the DOM is basically a global variable, and any part of the app might manipulate any part of the DOM. Example: Someone wrote CSS that is coupled to a child element (which seemed the clearest way to write it at the time) and someone else comes along to edit the content of the HTML which adds a layer and now your logic is broken even if the CSS still looks right. The frameworks make it easier to avoid that kind of fragile coupling / enforce a consistent way to manage the interaction of JS, CSS, and HTML. All that said, web applications really are an entirely different beast than websites, even if they exist on a spectrum.
      - lostcolony 8y ago
        Yep. In any shared development context (or even solo but trying to ensure proper containment of component structure, logic, and design rather than just one ugly hodgepodge), there is no good solution without a framework. And because literally everyone runs into that problem, everyone has created their own framework, which is why there's so many of them. But none of that is an issue on the backend, where there's no DOM considerations. No HTML or CSS either. Just Javascript. And there it's straightforward, succinct, and usually easily understood (usual caveat of bad developers, but compare average Node codebases with average Java codebases).
- ficklepickle 8y ago
  Same with that Personal Home Page language. No self respecting company would ever use that! Now, all of you, get off my lawn!
- lonalzarus 8y ago
  It's not my first language, I've been an engineer for 20 years, I've picked it up in the last 5. I can see what accounts for its success, it's responsive and fluid, both in its features and in its evolution which makes it perfect for what the web and emergent technologies need right now. And it's ubiquitous. It won't be important forever, but it is definitely important now.
- krapp 8y ago
  I feel like there was a period after jQuery came along and before Node and the entire morass of "enterprise" javascript when it wasn't hated so much. The problem with javascript isn't that it's a terrible language per se - it's perfectly adequate for its actual, intended use case (lightweight scripting and DOM access.) The problem is that "flawed language designed in 3 days" is now being used everywhere, and that its ecosystem is a trainwreck of unnecessary complexity tied to a badly designed package manager linked to a proprietary backend.

crimsonalucard 8y ago

It's fashionable to love it according to the numbers and these replies...

techntoke 8y ago
Exactly, it's not hated. Almost every coding school and boot camp only teaches JavaScript.

VMG 8y ago

> you should be scared I am