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Unfortunately, when one is seeking to learn JavaScript, you will encounter all variations of: + Use Typescript (no, it's not the same as JS) + Use ClojureScri
by vorpalhex 7y ago
Unfortunately, when one is seeking to learn JavaScript, you will encounter all variations of:
+ Use Typescript (no, it's not the same as JS)
+ Use ClojureScript
+ Use Elm
+ Use Reason
+ Use ...
If you go back about five years, you'll find this pattern also exists, except all the things people were saying to use are dead. Dead like a forgotten Egyptian pharaoh - buried and never to be seen again.
Unfortunately, all the code bases written in these poor JS-likes are still alive and I and many other poor souls still have to maintain the dang things.
You know what's still alive? Javascript. You know what still basically works the same? Javascript. You know what codebases from five or seven years ago I don't mind maintaining as much? Javascript.
- mxschumacher 7y agohow common are larger vanilla JS codebases?
- vorpalhex 7y agoThere are millions.
- mxschumacher 7y agocan you name a few?
- azangru 7y agoIt really feels that with typescript it may be finally different. Deno, the new version of Node, will speak typescript natively; and the adoption and satisfaction rates for typescript are over the roof. Coffeescript or clojurescript don't even come close.
- mpfundstein 7y agoDeno is doa
- blunte 7y agoJavaScript is still alive not because it's worthy of being alive (compared to the four other languages you mentioned), but because it was first and became well entrenched. COBOL is still alive too... ClojureScript and Reason are superior languages, period. They will live long happy lives, too.
- woodrowbarlow 7y agosomething else will come along that's even more superior, and the tooling surrounding your once-superior codebases will bitrot as the community jumps onto the next passing ship and you're caught holding the bag.
- vorpalhex 7y agoOddly enough, being a superior language isn't the same thing as being a language anyone actually wants to use. There's a reason Python and JS are some of the most popular languages in the world despite "superior languages" existing. I suspect that most of the ones I name will join the bone pile of the many other "superior languages" or continue to be used at most by a niche few.
- jazzyjackson 7y agoBetamax and HDDVD were superior too.
- finnjohnsen2 7y agoI get your point. However I recently encountered 5 year old javascript and it was horrible. Full out jQuery and the (function(export){})(arg) pattern. And lots of dead test in some some long gone test library. But your point is valid if it were CoffeeScript and jQuery. That would be even worse for sure. There is no relief in sight and it'll suck for a long time because everything is very fluid everywhere. Legacy will suck. But if you want to be as productive and confident as you can these days; my take it is to not engange in vanilla JavaScript.