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There's a bizarre, naive belief that all programming is web programming. It's patronising and inaccurate, but it's common among people who think Javascript is

There's a bizarre, naive belief that all programming is web programming. It's patronising and inaccurate, but it's common among people who think Javascript is a serious language.

paulryanrogers 7y ago
Not sure who those people are. But I've programmed precessionally in C, C++, Java, and PHP; and I'd say JavaScript is the most seriously intense. Doing anything useful with it requires knowing so much more than just the language part: libraries, platform (browser, server, Electron, etc.), and the company's preferred tooling/frameworks.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Even with just vanilla JS it can get a bit confusing sometimes. I usually spend a lot of time reading MDN when working with JS just to see if I am missing anything obvious.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Javascript is a frustrating language. On the one hand it's more "serious" than [legacy] C, C++, Java, and Python because it had first-class functions and real lexical closures from day one. On the other, it had imprecise typing, no multiprocessing, and no access to the file system. Some of that has been fixed, but Javascript was designed by one person in a week to script web browsers and that's still painfully obvious.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  > On the one hand it's more "serious" than [legacy] C, C++, Java, and Python because it had first-class functions and real lexical closures from day one. Why do closures make a language "serious"? To me languages are just languages. Seriousness is defined the problem you are solving. Are flight controls serious? Probably. Is yet another small scale CRUD app serious? Probably not. There is a lot of "serious" code written in every major language. There is a huge amount of "serious" code written in C and C++, and all of this without first class functions or lexical closures.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    Good question. I'll try to give my answer, but others will have their own opinions. Computer languages move in the direction of supporting "good ideas" as those ideas become generally recognized as being good. Usually those ideas start in academia and gradually find their way to industry. Some examples: Structured ("goto-less") programming, object-oriented programming, automatic memory management, strong typing, lexical closures, first-class functions, functional programming, automatic bounds checking, and prevention of memory ownership violations. A "serious" language is indeed partially defined by its fitness for the stated job at hand, but also for how well it handles the often unstated requirements of productivity, security, maintainability, and robustness in the face of likely future needs. Languages that have more of the above features tend to do better at these unstated requirements. What is and isn't a "serious" language can change over time depending on what we learn is important. C was a serious language for a while, but it has not been one for a couple of decades because of its non-support of anything remotely resembling security. C is still used because of its extreme portability, but it probably should be abandoned. Conversely, languages that support first-class functions, lexical closures, and automatic memory management are now in the serious category because those things present huge improvements in productivity, maintainability, and robustness in the face of future changes. (I'll even go out on a longer limb and say that programmers who learn to think in terms of functional composition become more productive coders in any language.) Pure O-O languages are beginning to move in the non-serious direction because they cannot be readily parallelized in an era when parallel computing is the only way forward now that Moore's law is dead. Javascript anticipated a couple of these features before other mainstream languages, and now it's moving beyond web browsers. So yeah, with some reservations I'd call it serious. Nowadays I'd never write major code in a language that doesn't directly support most of the "serious" features I listed above; it would be too much of a hit to my productivity. It would feel like building a house with a hammer and nails when nailguns were readily available. If I were writing embedded apps like flight controls today, I'd use Lisp for the high-level parts and Rust and maybe a bit of assembler for the low level parts.
    - Skunkleton 7y ago
      I find the idea of viewing a language as "serious" to be fundamentally flawed. Every project has a set of requirements and constraints. Usually the pragmatic language choice is dictated by external factors. Things like library support, developer expertise, and tool maturity are much bigger factors for most businesses. The "serious" professional choice for my company (an OS vendor, with a focus on certifiable systems) is currently C. The tooling we use is for C, the expertise within my company is in C, and the industry that we work with understands and expects C. At some point, the operating systems industry will transition to more modern languages. Rust is promising, but it is a long way from being a serious consideration for FAA certifiable projects.
- stefan_ 7y ago
  It is such a "serious" language that it has only floating point numbers. I think you will find it is not fit for serious work.
- richardwhiuk 7y ago
  Java has closures and has had since node was released. Same for C++. Javas functions aren't first class, but only to the extent that there's some syntactic sugar.
stefan_ 7y ago
It's the same kind of people that describe themselves as "full stack" because they made JavaScript in the browser talk to JavaScript on the server, the latter running in some kind of heroku auto-container magic.
vedantroy 7y ago
"It's common among people who think Javascript is a serious language". I can't tell if you think JS is not a serious programming language.

There's a bizarre, naive belief that all programming is web programming. It's patronising and inaccurate, but it's common among people who think Javascript is a serious language.

paulryanrogers 7y ago

Not sure who those people are. But I've programmed precessionally in C, C++, Java, and PHP; and I'd say JavaScript is the most seriously intense. Doing anything useful with it requires knowing so much more than just the language part: libraries, platform (browser, server, Electron, etc.), and the company's preferred tooling/frameworks.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Even with just vanilla JS it can get a bit confusing sometimes. I usually spend a lot of time reading MDN when working with JS just to see if I am missing anything obvious.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Javascript is a frustrating language. On the one hand it's more "serious" than [legacy] C, C++, Java, and Python because it had first-class functions and real lexical closures from day one. On the other, it had imprecise typing, no multiprocessing, and no access to the file system. Some of that has been fixed, but Javascript was designed by one person in a week to script web browsers and that's still painfully obvious.

Skunkleton 7y ago
> On the one hand it's more "serious" than [legacy] C, C++, Java, and Python because it had first-class functions and real lexical closures from day one. Why do closures make a language "serious"? To me languages are just languages. Seriousness is defined the problem you are solving. Are flight controls serious? Probably. Is yet another small scale CRUD app serious? Probably not. There is a lot of "serious" code written in every major language. There is a huge amount of "serious" code written in C and C++, and all of this without first class functions or lexical closures.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Good question. I'll try to give my answer, but others will have their own opinions. Computer languages move in the direction of supporting "good ideas" as those ideas become generally recognized as being good. Usually those ideas start in academia and gradually find their way to industry. Some examples: Structured ("goto-less") programming, object-oriented programming, automatic memory management, strong typing, lexical closures, first-class functions, functional programming, automatic bounds checking, and prevention of memory ownership violations. A "serious" language is indeed partially defined by its fitness for the stated job at hand, but also for how well it handles the often unstated requirements of productivity, security, maintainability, and robustness in the face of likely future needs. Languages that have more of the above features tend to do better at these unstated requirements. What is and isn't a "serious" language can change over time depending on what we learn is important. C was a serious language for a while, but it has not been one for a couple of decades because of its non-support of anything remotely resembling security. C is still used because of its extreme portability, but it probably should be abandoned. Conversely, languages that support first-class functions, lexical closures, and automatic memory management are now in the serious category because those things present huge improvements in productivity, maintainability, and robustness in the face of future changes. (I'll even go out on a longer limb and say that programmers who learn to think in terms of functional composition become more productive coders in any language.) Pure O-O languages are beginning to move in the non-serious direction because they cannot be readily parallelized in an era when parallel computing is the only way forward now that Moore's law is dead. Javascript anticipated a couple of these features before other mainstream languages, and now it's moving beyond web browsers. So yeah, with some reservations I'd call it serious. Nowadays I'd never write major code in a language that doesn't directly support most of the "serious" features I listed above; it would be too much of a hit to my productivity. It would feel like building a house with a hammer and nails when nailguns were readily available. If I were writing embedded apps like flight controls today, I'd use Lisp for the high-level parts and Rust and maybe a bit of assembler for the low level parts.
  - Skunkleton 7y ago
    I find the idea of viewing a language as "serious" to be fundamentally flawed. Every project has a set of requirements and constraints. Usually the pragmatic language choice is dictated by external factors. Things like library support, developer expertise, and tool maturity are much bigger factors for most businesses. The "serious" professional choice for my company (an OS vendor, with a focus on certifiable systems) is currently C. The tooling we use is for C, the expertise within my company is in C, and the industry that we work with understands and expects C. At some point, the operating systems industry will transition to more modern languages. Rust is promising, but it is a long way from being a serious consideration for FAA certifiable projects.
stefan_ 7y ago
It is such a "serious" language that it has only floating point numbers. I think you will find it is not fit for serious work.
richardwhiuk 7y ago
Java has closures and has had since node was released. Same for C++. Javas functions aren't first class, but only to the extent that there's some syntactic sugar.

stefan_ 7y ago

It's the same kind of people that describe themselves as "full stack" because they made JavaScript in the browser talk to JavaScript on the server, the latter running in some kind of heroku auto-container magic.

vedantroy 7y ago

"It's common among people who think Javascript is a serious language". I can't tell if you think JS is not a serious programming language.