6 ms·

> JS is a great language literally no one believes this

by vmchale 7y ago

zbtaylor1 7y ago
The non-vocal majority does.
jasonmcaffee 7y ago
I do.
ajna91 7y ago
It's certainly been pleasant so far as I've been learning 2d game development!
erikpukinskis 7y ago
I love ES5. The language has gone downhill though.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  What about ES6?
- mpfundstein 7y ago
  Now thats an unusual viewpoint? Could you elaborate why you think so? I personally found js terrible before es6 and love it since then
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    Here are some things I find problematic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848597 But I’m happy for you that you like ES6. You all own the language now, so enjoy it. Us ES5 folks are going to have to rewind and fork so we can have a community again.
MisterOctober 7y ago
I like JS. I use JS daily. JS is part of the workflow for nearly everyone I know who works with code. For me, ES6 is fantastic to use. Some of the better books on JS [I'm thinking specifically of Haverbeke's "Eloquent Javascript"] are general computing classics in their own right. I used to be a snob about JS, due to the fact that in the 90s / early 2000s, it had major shortcomings and produced a lot of slow, crashy web pages. But when I learned modern JS, I realized that it is now a fully mature language equal to any other, and easily used in a huge variety of contexts [thanks in no small part to Node]
- ryeights 7y ago
  JS is a terrible language. The amount of pitfalls, language features you must avoid, and obscure paradigms you must follow to make JS usable is mind-boggling. Just because you can use JS well doesn't mean it's a good language.
  - ausjke 7y ago
    no longer is too good or too bad, it depends on how much time you spent on it and how good you're at it actually.
  - ahuth 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, what languages do you think are good ones?
    - ryeights 7y ago
      Good? That's harder to answer. Not terrible? Java, C, Python, C#, Swift, Go...
    - CalChris 7y ago
      Scheme is a good programming language.
- fhfghfghgf 7y ago
  >JS daily. JS is part of the workflow for nearly everyone I know who works with code. What about there being no choice when you want to do almost anything web related WASM ain't mature yet.
colejohnson66 7y ago
JavaScript may have its quirks, but TypeScript is a great improvement. And with a few tweaks to your package.json, you can code in TS for Node.js!
- rounce 7y ago
  What are these tweaks you speak of?
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Just do a search for “use TypeScript with Node”: https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/typescript-with-node-and-express-js-why-when-and-how-eb6bc73edd5d https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/typescript-wi... https://blog.risingstack.com/building-a-node-js-app-with-typescript-tutorial/ https://blog.risingstack.com/building-a-node-js-app-with-typ... Basically, you install the `typescript` package which gives you `tsc`. Then you configure Node to run your program with `tsc` through your package.json.
tombert 7y ago
While I certainly wouldn't call JS "great", I actually do genuinely like a lot of parts of it. I like the Lispey style of embedding data structures (hashmaps and arrays) directly into the language, and I like that it has somewhat popularized some functional techniques and made them mainstream. While callbacks aren't a great way of doing continuation-passing, at least we can credit JS with making continuation-passing mainstream. In combination with the fact that JS actually does work pretty well on both frontend and backend, it is a language I use semi-regularly for prototyping, given its flexibility. Granted, if I decide to make a "real" version of the project, I'll probably do it with a more functional language, but I think JS doesn't suck too bad.
tchaffee 7y ago
I love it and think it's a great language. It has bad parts, but they are easy to avoid, especially with a modern linter. So there you go. You're wrong. At least one experienced developer who has coded in many languages thinks JavaScript is a great language.
Kwantuum 7y ago
I do.
lowtolerance 7y ago
Literally no one is impressed by your cynicism.
WilliamEdward 7y ago
I do. I love vanilla JS especially. The way it interacts with the DOM and the way JSON works makes more sense to me than most other languages, and this is coming from a python user and newly lisp user. Not everyone has the same brain as you. People enjoy things you don't understand.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
Literally Douglas Crockford made a second career out of believing this.

> JS is a great language literally no one believes this

zbtaylor1 7y ago

The non-vocal majority does.

jasonmcaffee 7y ago

I do.

ajna91 7y ago

It's certainly been pleasant so far as I've been learning 2d game development!

erikpukinskis 7y ago

I love ES5. The language has gone downhill though.

colejohnson66 7y ago
What about ES6?
mpfundstein 7y ago
Now thats an unusual viewpoint? Could you elaborate why you think so? I personally found js terrible before es6 and love it since then
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Here are some things I find problematic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848597 But I’m happy for you that you like ES6. You all own the language now, so enjoy it. Us ES5 folks are going to have to rewind and fork so we can have a community again.

MisterOctober 7y ago

I like JS. I use JS daily. JS is part of the workflow for nearly everyone I know who works with code. For me, ES6 is fantastic to use. Some of the better books on JS [I'm thinking specifically of Haverbeke's "Eloquent Javascript"] are general computing classics in their own right. I used to be a snob about JS, due to the fact that in the 90s / early 2000s, it had major shortcomings and produced a lot of slow, crashy web pages. But when I learned modern JS, I realized that it is now a fully mature language equal to any other, and easily used in a huge variety of contexts [thanks in no small part to Node]

ryeights 7y ago
JS is a terrible language. The amount of pitfalls, language features you must avoid, and obscure paradigms you must follow to make JS usable is mind-boggling. Just because you can use JS well doesn't mean it's a good language.
- ausjke 7y ago
  no longer is too good or too bad, it depends on how much time you spent on it and how good you're at it actually.
- ahuth 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what languages do you think are good ones?
  - ryeights 7y ago
    Good? That's harder to answer. Not terrible? Java, C, Python, C#, Swift, Go...
  - CalChris 7y ago
    Scheme is a good programming language.
fhfghfghgf 7y ago
>JS daily. JS is part of the workflow for nearly everyone I know who works with code. What about there being no choice when you want to do almost anything web related WASM ain't mature yet.

colejohnson66 7y ago

JavaScript may have its quirks, but TypeScript is a great improvement. And with a few tweaks to your package.json, you can code in TS for Node.js!

rounce 7y ago
What are these tweaks you speak of?
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Just do a search for “use TypeScript with Node”: https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/typescript-with-node-and-express-js-why-when-and-how-eb6bc73edd5d https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/typescript-wi... https://blog.risingstack.com/building-a-node-js-app-with-typescript-tutorial/ https://blog.risingstack.com/building-a-node-js-app-with-typ... Basically, you install the `typescript` package which gives you `tsc`. Then you configure Node to run your program with `tsc` through your package.json.

tombert 7y ago

While I certainly wouldn't call JS "great", I actually do genuinely like a lot of parts of it. I like the Lispey style of embedding data structures (hashmaps and arrays) directly into the language, and I like that it has somewhat popularized some functional techniques and made them mainstream. While callbacks aren't a great way of doing continuation-passing, at least we can credit JS with making continuation-passing mainstream. In combination with the fact that JS actually does work pretty well on both frontend and backend, it is a language I use semi-regularly for prototyping, given its flexibility. Granted, if I decide to make a "real" version of the project, I'll probably do it with a more functional language, but I think JS doesn't suck too bad.

tchaffee 7y ago

I love it and think it's a great language. It has bad parts, but they are easy to avoid, especially with a modern linter. So there you go. You're wrong. At least one experienced developer who has coded in many languages thinks JavaScript is a great language.

Kwantuum 7y ago

I do.

lowtolerance 7y ago

Literally no one is impressed by your cynicism.

WilliamEdward 7y ago

I do. I love vanilla JS especially. The way it interacts with the DOM and the way JSON works makes more sense to me than most other languages, and this is coming from a python user and newly lisp user. Not everyone has the same brain as you. People enjoy things you don't understand.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

Literally Douglas Crockford made a second career out of believing this.