4 ms·

I'd add that it has functions as first-class citizens and closures. Javascript has for sure some crappy parts, but there is also a lot of good in it.

silentbicycle 16y ago
I find Javascript depressing. If it had a few more years to develop, it could have been a really great language. I understand why it wound up that way, but, sigh. If you want to see a much better language with the same general design, look at Lua. It's made for scripting C programs rather than web pages, and it has had over a decade longer to mature.
- brainlock 16y ago
  Why do you find it depressing? I'm not saying that there aren't better programming languages than Javascript. I'm just saying that there is a subset of Javascript which is really expressive and elegant.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    That elegant, expressive subset is basically Lua. It's been able to jettison most cruft over the years. I'm not a web developer, but every time I read/use Javascript, it feels like a broken fork of my favorite language. Javascript could have been that good, too. I like where Eich was going with it, but the browser wars etc. meant that shipping an early version made the most business sense, and design errors (which would have shaken out) got frozen in the spec.
    - BrendanEich 16y ago
      See http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:harmony http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:harmony and the pages it links in the first paragraph. ES5 strict (on which Harmony is based) removes or fixes some of the cruftiness. It's not the case that the Web dooms us forever to use JS as it was in 1995. That is simply false on a number of JS-specific points, but more generally: the Web's deployed-browsers-with-enough-market-share-to-matter intersection semantics moves over the years. It does not stay still or grow only compatibly. Bad old forms (plugins, especially, but also things like spacer GIFs used in pre-modern table layouts, not to mention old JS versions) die off. So, cheer up! JS can't be Lua, but it doesn't need to be. Its job is to be the best it can be according to its species and genus, its body plan. Which may be related to Lua's, but which was not and will never be the same as Lua's, because JS and Lua live in quite different ecosystems. A concrete example: Lua has coroutines now, but JS is unlikely to get them in the same way, interoperably. Some VMs would have a hard time implementing, especially where the continuation spans a native method activation. This is a case where Lua's single-source implementation shines, but that's just not going to happen on the web, in variously-implemented, open- and closed-source (the latter including clean-room, for fear of patents) browsers. So, we're aiming for Pythonic generators at most. If we go further than generators, I'll be surprised. Pleased too, don't get me wrong. However I doubt it will happen, because some on the committee do not want deeper continuations than generators, since greater than one frame of depth breaks local security-hat-wearing reasoning about what is invariant in JS's run-to-completion, apparently single-threaded execution model.
- haribilalic 16y ago
  JavaScript was released in 1995 as part of Netscape Navigator 2.0. Lua was released in 1993. I don't know about a decade.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    Lua has been able to make major, reverses-compatibility breaking changes to improve its design in ways Javascript hasn't. Where Javascript has "The Good Parts" and incrementally improving implementations, Lua has been able to fix things and evolve. "One thing Mike [Pall] didn't highlight: get a simpler language. Lua is much simpler than JS." - Brendan Eich (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57671 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57671)
    - dkersten 16y ago
      Lua (without JIT) is also one of the fastest non-JIT, non-native compiled languages there is. LuaJIT is also one of the faster JIT languages. Now, I'm not sure how it compares to the popular JS JIT engines, but from what I've read, its very hard to beat LuaJIT for performance.
  - didip 16y ago
    If only Netscape just pick up Lua or Python instead of creating a language in a rush.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - mascarenhas 16y ago
      You have to compare Lua at 1995 (version 2) to JavaScript at 1995, as its development, at least inside the browser, would be arrested the same way JavaScript's was. Lua 2 was certainly had a much better implementation than the first JavaScript, but I would not call it a better language (didn't have JavaScript's annoying quirks, but also didn't have closures, for example). 2000's Lua (5.0 and 5.1) is quite different from its earlier incarnations.
- cpr 16y ago
  I find Lua depressing and Javascript exciting. So where does that leave us? If it's all a matter of taste as to what's desirable in a "mature" language, your argument doesn't go very far.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    I'm mostly thinking about how many of the problems highlighted in "Javscript: The Good Parts" have been fixed in Lua, while Javascript can't be fixed. Not a matter of design and taste, but outright bugs.
    - cpr 16y ago
      OK, don't use the "bad parts." But it's a lot more than that. It's the "taste" of the language itself, and Javascript tastes much more like the kind of language I like using. Lua always struck me as being so simple it crosses the line into Factor/Forth territory.
      - orangecat 16y ago
        OK, don't use the "bad parts." That's what I try to do, which turns it into a crippled Ruby. And there's no getting around it silently doing the wrong thing if I ever forget a "var" or "===".
        jashkenas 16y ago
        For what it's worth, there are tools that can help you avoid the bad parts. JSLint won't let you forget a "var" or "===" ... and if you use CoffeeScript, it's not possible to forget "var" or "===", because there aren't any.

silentbicycle 16y ago

I find Javascript depressing. If it had a few more years to develop, it could have been a really great language. I understand why it wound up that way, but, sigh. If you want to see a much better language with the same general design, look at Lua. It's made for scripting C programs rather than web pages, and it has had over a decade longer to mature.

brainlock 16y ago
Why do you find it depressing? I'm not saying that there aren't better programming languages than Javascript. I'm just saying that there is a subset of Javascript which is really expressive and elegant.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  That elegant, expressive subset is basically Lua. It's been able to jettison most cruft over the years. I'm not a web developer, but every time I read/use Javascript, it feels like a broken fork of my favorite language. Javascript could have been that good, too. I like where Eich was going with it, but the browser wars etc. meant that shipping an early version made the most business sense, and design errors (which would have shaken out) got frozen in the spec.
  - BrendanEich 16y ago
    See http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:harmony http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:harmony and the pages it links in the first paragraph. ES5 strict (on which Harmony is based) removes or fixes some of the cruftiness. It's not the case that the Web dooms us forever to use JS as it was in 1995. That is simply false on a number of JS-specific points, but more generally: the Web's deployed-browsers-with-enough-market-share-to-matter intersection semantics moves over the years. It does not stay still or grow only compatibly. Bad old forms (plugins, especially, but also things like spacer GIFs used in pre-modern table layouts, not to mention old JS versions) die off. So, cheer up! JS can't be Lua, but it doesn't need to be. Its job is to be the best it can be according to its species and genus, its body plan. Which may be related to Lua's, but which was not and will never be the same as Lua's, because JS and Lua live in quite different ecosystems. A concrete example: Lua has coroutines now, but JS is unlikely to get them in the same way, interoperably. Some VMs would have a hard time implementing, especially where the continuation spans a native method activation. This is a case where Lua's single-source implementation shines, but that's just not going to happen on the web, in variously-implemented, open- and closed-source (the latter including clean-room, for fear of patents) browsers. So, we're aiming for Pythonic generators at most. If we go further than generators, I'll be surprised. Pleased too, don't get me wrong. However I doubt it will happen, because some on the committee do not want deeper continuations than generators, since greater than one frame of depth breaks local security-hat-wearing reasoning about what is invariant in JS's run-to-completion, apparently single-threaded execution model.
haribilalic 16y ago
JavaScript was released in 1995 as part of Netscape Navigator 2.0. Lua was released in 1993. I don't know about a decade.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  Lua has been able to make major, reverses-compatibility breaking changes to improve its design in ways Javascript hasn't. Where Javascript has "The Good Parts" and incrementally improving implementations, Lua has been able to fix things and evolve. "One thing Mike [Pall] didn't highlight: get a simpler language. Lua is much simpler than JS." - Brendan Eich (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57671 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57671)
  - dkersten 16y ago
    Lua (without JIT) is also one of the fastest non-JIT, non-native compiled languages there is. LuaJIT is also one of the faster JIT languages. Now, I'm not sure how it compares to the popular JS JIT engines, but from what I've read, its very hard to beat LuaJIT for performance.
- didip 16y ago
  If only Netscape just pick up Lua or Python instead of creating a language in a rush.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - mascarenhas 16y ago
    You have to compare Lua at 1995 (version 2) to JavaScript at 1995, as its development, at least inside the browser, would be arrested the same way JavaScript's was. Lua 2 was certainly had a much better implementation than the first JavaScript, but I would not call it a better language (didn't have JavaScript's annoying quirks, but also didn't have closures, for example). 2000's Lua (5.0 and 5.1) is quite different from its earlier incarnations.
cpr 16y ago
I find Lua depressing and Javascript exciting. So where does that leave us? If it's all a matter of taste as to what's desirable in a "mature" language, your argument doesn't go very far.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  I'm mostly thinking about how many of the problems highlighted in "Javscript: The Good Parts" have been fixed in Lua, while Javascript can't be fixed. Not a matter of design and taste, but outright bugs.
  - cpr 16y ago
    OK, don't use the "bad parts." But it's a lot more than that. It's the "taste" of the language itself, and Javascript tastes much more like the kind of language I like using. Lua always struck me as being so simple it crosses the line into Factor/Forth territory.
    - orangecat 16y ago
      OK, don't use the "bad parts." That's what I try to do, which turns it into a crippled Ruby. And there's no getting around it silently doing the wrong thing if I ever forget a "var" or "===".
      - jashkenas 16y ago
        For what it's worth, there are tools that can help you avoid the bad parts. JSLint won't let you forget a "var" or "===" ... and if you use CoffeeScript, it's not possible to forget "var" or "===", because there aren't any.