5 ms·

I have impression that other way round, changes in js are one of the slowest amongst programming languages. We have lots of js in our project, and it's mostly

by ungzd 8y ago

I have impression that other way round, changes in js are one of the slowest amongst programming languages. We have lots of js in our project, and it's mostly the same js as when I first learned it in early 2000s. No ES6, because it's completely unsupported in Android Browser and IE. Why bother with transpiling for just shorter syntax for functions? We had Sprockets and I'm not sure if there's adequate transpiling of ES6 for it. So, browsers are stuck with ES5 forever, does that mean that JS is evolving fast? And ES6 itself is ancient, it was released when iOS still had skeuomorphic UI. On the other hand, while playing with IoT project I had to use C++ recently, and it feels like entirely different language than 10 years ago. Even Ruby had syntax changes in last few years, and lots of small standard library changes. Maybe fashion and "best practices" in js world change frequently, but not the language itself. Featurewise it's still on the level of Python 2.2.

horsawlarway 8y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but you're basically talking about interpreter support here - not the language. This would be like me taking the old Borland 4.0 C++ compiler and then telling you that C++ is SO slow to change. It hasn't moved since 1994! Which is wrong. The language spec has clearly updated. ECMAScript is not defined by browser support, even if you should be taking browser support into consideration before choosing tooling. Just because you're not choosing to use new language features doesn't mean they don't exist.
schwartzworld 8y ago
Obviously if you are deliberately avoiding new language features, you're still going to be writing the same JS as you were in the early 2000s. I could write Python 2.7 and it would be pretty much the same thing. However, a lot of ES6+ features offer more than just syntactic sugar. For example, arrow functions remove a lot of weirdness regarding 'this'.
- ungzd 8y ago
  There's two javascripts: one that really works in browsers, and it's still ES5. And other javascript, that works on abstract virtual machine implemented inside Babel. And only the first one is "real" javascript.

by ungzd 8y ago

horsawlarway 8y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but you're basically talking about interpreter support here - not the language. This would be like me taking the old Borland 4.0 C++ compiler and then telling you that C++ is SO slow to change. It hasn't moved since 1994! Which is wrong. The language spec has clearly updated. ECMAScript is not defined by browser support, even if you should be taking browser support into consideration before choosing tooling. Just because you're not choosing to use new language features doesn't mean they don't exist.

schwartzworld 8y ago

Obviously if you are deliberately avoiding new language features, you're still going to be writing the same JS as you were in the early 2000s. I could write Python 2.7 and it would be pretty much the same thing. However, a lot of ES6+ features offer more than just syntactic sugar. For example, arrow functions remove a lot of weirdness regarding 'this'.

ungzd 8y ago
There's two javascripts: one that really works in browsers, and it's still ES5. And other javascript, that works on abstract virtual machine implemented inside Babel. And only the first one is "real" javascript.