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A certain subset of technical people seems to be unable to understand how it can happen that — what they believe to be — technically inferior solutions can win

A certain subset of technical people seems to be unable to understand how it can happen that — what they believe to be — technically inferior solutions can win major market share and become the defacto standard for decades to come. Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that JavaScript is great, but I am also not satisfied with the status quo of the discussion around it. I don't really see how this contributes anything to improve the situation. Yes, a prototype was done in 10 days. Yes, the web scene has been vibrant and iterating extremely fast for a long time and that has left marks on the quality of the technology more often than not. But hey, instead of complaining, come up with something that is capable of transforming it to the better! That's not easy and I suspect it's not solvable by technical means solely. So it's hard. And it's easier to just write blog posts that complain again and again.

johnisgood 7y ago
Complaining is recognizing that there is an issue. This article is trying to raise awareness of some issues. It is a start! I do not think that not providing a solution to all (or some) issues invalidates anything that has been said. Having a solution is not a necessity. I may point out flaws in a system, but I do not need to have a solution ready for it, do I? The flaws exist, with or without a solution.
- starbugs 7y ago
  We've been stuck in this for at least a decade now. That is what I am referring to with "I am not satisfied with the status quo of the discussion". The author of this specific article doesn't even seem to consider that there may be non-technical factors at play that cannot be fixed by coming up with (yet) a better language. It's the same over and over again, unfortunately.
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    Well yes, I agree, I would like to brainstorm potential solutions to the issues at hand, too.
  - smallnamespace 7y ago
    The discussion never resolves, and will never resolve, because the participants aren't the same people - there's literally a constant influx of new, inexperienced developers facing the same issues in a slightly new context (and hence using new language to describe it). For another example, just go to Reddit's front page. It's the same trendy questions from young people a decade earlier as well. You'll know an online community is on the path to dissolution when it can 'resolve' problems for good. The same applies to HN: I'm sure my point has been made many times before, and will be made many times again here.
cm2187 7y ago
Isn't the solution on its way with wasm, ie. the ability to run pretty much any other language in the browser at high performance?
- tyingq 7y ago
  They would need direct DOM access, the GC, and polymorphic inline cache for many of the popular dynamically typed scripting languages. Some of them also have pretty hefty stdlibs. I suspect you'll see more Lua, than Python, for example. Or maybe something micropython like?
  - cm2187 7y ago
    I believe direct DOM access & GC are on their way. I don't know what a polymorphic inline cache is. Frankly when you look at the number of megabytes downloaded by a typical web page, having a standard library stored on cdn shared between websites wouldn't be that big of a deal.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
> That's not easy and I suspect it's not solvable by technical means solely. So it's hard. And it's easier to just write blog posts that complain again and again. That would be WebAssembly and its true since it is progressing a bit slowly but thats a good thing. If they get it right you can write JS to WebAssembly thats modern and backwards compatibility wont matter or write Python to WASM, or Rust, Go, C#.... And so on. Someone mentioned here on HN ages back that WASM will probably be the next stage after SPA frameworks. I think C#'s Blazor project is a strong indicator that what is to come will be pretty damn good and pretty damn powerful. Granted it will take a while as WASM matures and we make sure to push users towards modern browsers. I think tech like Blazor will even see old tech like ActiveX or Java Applets find their replacements in WASM. Heck we saw the other day a full blown Flash Player Emulator in Rust for WebAssembly. That was quite well done! The future is in WASM and it will take a bit to get it just right but at least we can work on making sure it is designed properly. Do what Microsoft did: they learned from Javas mistakes and C# became a really good language. Lambdas in Java took forever to be added.
crusader1099 7y ago
> But hey, instead of complaining, come up with something that is capable of transforming it to the better! This reminds me of the "submit your own PR if you want this feature so bad" mentality that I see on a fair few open source projects. For most people, this isn't feasible. Creating a new programming language, let alone one that could one-up JavaScript any time soon, would be a difficult task. I think people like to point out the flaws of JavaScript because there isn't really a major alternative, it is the de facto web language.
- starbugs 7y ago
  Please consider a not so deeply technical solution. You can do more than creating yet another programming language. I bet if you did, the next rant would be about your language and its shortcomings. Even a very small constructive contribution to the discussion could be very helpful and have a big impact. A decade long series of rants doesn't help at all.
zzzcpan 7y ago
> what they believe to be technically inferior solutions When a lot of programming language research is pseudo science, technical superiority of a programming language becomes almost impossible to judge from CS point of view and yet these are the backgrounds people judging programming languages usually have. So here we are, not even able to have proper discussions concerning programming languages. Maybe things will change in the future now that actual empirical evidence can be gathered from open source code and bug trackers, but so far it doesn't seem to have a significant impact.
traderjane 7y ago
The problem is partly "political" in the sense of negotiating industry power (rather than state, community, or interpersonal power), and complaining is part of political communication and deliberation. Consensus is not instant or free.

johnisgood 7y ago

Complaining is recognizing that there is an issue. This article is trying to raise awareness of some issues. It is a start! I do not think that not providing a solution to all (or some) issues invalidates anything that has been said. Having a solution is not a necessity. I may point out flaws in a system, but I do not need to have a solution ready for it, do I? The flaws exist, with or without a solution.

starbugs 7y ago
We've been stuck in this for at least a decade now. That is what I am referring to with "I am not satisfied with the status quo of the discussion". The author of this specific article doesn't even seem to consider that there may be non-technical factors at play that cannot be fixed by coming up with (yet) a better language. It's the same over and over again, unfortunately.
- johnisgood 7y ago
  Well yes, I agree, I would like to brainstorm potential solutions to the issues at hand, too.
- smallnamespace 7y ago
  The discussion never resolves, and will never resolve, because the participants aren't the same people - there's literally a constant influx of new, inexperienced developers facing the same issues in a slightly new context (and hence using new language to describe it). For another example, just go to Reddit's front page. It's the same trendy questions from young people a decade earlier as well. You'll know an online community is on the path to dissolution when it can 'resolve' problems for good. The same applies to HN: I'm sure my point has been made many times before, and will be made many times again here.

cm2187 7y ago

Isn't the solution on its way with wasm, ie. the ability to run pretty much any other language in the browser at high performance?

tyingq 7y ago
They would need direct DOM access, the GC, and polymorphic inline cache for many of the popular dynamically typed scripting languages. Some of them also have pretty hefty stdlibs. I suspect you'll see more Lua, than Python, for example. Or maybe something micropython like?
- cm2187 7y ago
  I believe direct DOM access & GC are on their way. I don't know what a polymorphic inline cache is. Frankly when you look at the number of megabytes downloaded by a typical web page, having a standard library stored on cdn shared between websites wouldn't be that big of a deal.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

> That's not easy and I suspect it's not solvable by technical means solely. So it's hard. And it's easier to just write blog posts that complain again and again. That would be WebAssembly and its true since it is progressing a bit slowly but thats a good thing. If they get it right you can write JS to WebAssembly thats modern and backwards compatibility wont matter or write Python to WASM, or Rust, Go, C#.... And so on. Someone mentioned here on HN ages back that WASM will probably be the next stage after SPA frameworks. I think C#'s Blazor project is a strong indicator that what is to come will be pretty damn good and pretty damn powerful. Granted it will take a while as WASM matures and we make sure to push users towards modern browsers. I think tech like Blazor will even see old tech like ActiveX or Java Applets find their replacements in WASM. Heck we saw the other day a full blown Flash Player Emulator in Rust for WebAssembly. That was quite well done! The future is in WASM and it will take a bit to get it just right but at least we can work on making sure it is designed properly. Do what Microsoft did: they learned from Javas mistakes and C# became a really good language. Lambdas in Java took forever to be added.

crusader1099 7y ago

> But hey, instead of complaining, come up with something that is capable of transforming it to the better! This reminds me of the "submit your own PR if you want this feature so bad" mentality that I see on a fair few open source projects. For most people, this isn't feasible. Creating a new programming language, let alone one that could one-up JavaScript any time soon, would be a difficult task. I think people like to point out the flaws of JavaScript because there isn't really a major alternative, it is the de facto web language.

starbugs 7y ago
Please consider a not so deeply technical solution. You can do more than creating yet another programming language. I bet if you did, the next rant would be about your language and its shortcomings. Even a very small constructive contribution to the discussion could be very helpful and have a big impact. A decade long series of rants doesn't help at all.

zzzcpan 7y ago

> what they believe to be technically inferior solutions When a lot of programming language research is pseudo science, technical superiority of a programming language becomes almost impossible to judge from CS point of view and yet these are the backgrounds people judging programming languages usually have. So here we are, not even able to have proper discussions concerning programming languages. Maybe things will change in the future now that actual empirical evidence can be gathered from open source code and bug trackers, but so far it doesn't seem to have a significant impact.

traderjane 7y ago

The problem is partly "political" in the sense of negotiating industry power (rather than state, community, or interpersonal power), and complaining is part of political communication and deliberation. Consensus is not instant or free.