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When a language becomes stable, it also begins to lose popularity. (This is widely discussed). Javascript is the only language that has continued to grow forev

When a language becomes stable, it also begins to lose popularity. (This is widely discussed). Javascript is the only language that has continued to grow forever without becoming an "old" language in dev mindset. One reason is the constant churn of tooling, another is the immaturity of everything, so every generation of devs have a place to add something. Overall JS gains more than it loses. This is similar to the concept that the first buggy language to capture mindshare will eventually fix its bugs and leave the initially more perfect competitors behind.

code_biologist 5y ago
Worse is better, it still seems.
laurent92 5y ago
But all these improvements should mean productivity improvements. But my engineers still aren’t able after 18 months on a React project to churn screens like we did with Freemarker+jQuery (=with bare hands, technology-wise). Every new tool should accelerate the pace, but JS doesn’t seem to deliver.
- roofwellhams 5y ago
  If you do it properly saves time. I'm pretty sure something you guys doing might be wrong. Or maybe previous code in jQuery was not great in terms of architecture.
bronlund 5y ago
The main reason JavaScript is still "popular", is that you are more or less forced to use it if you are targeting web browsers. And since web developers had to spend a lot of time learning that crap, combined with that whole DevOps culture, they ended up wanting to use JavaScript on the backend as well. Which is such a bad idea it's difficult to explain even. People are starting to realize that this whole JavaScript ecosystem was a huge mistake. The level of complexity a typical Node framework introduces, compared to the benefits you get from using it, is just silly. A typical web developer doesn't understand this fact and naturally feels stupid when trying to figure this thing out. Some are moving back to PHP or Ruby, others forward using Go or Elixir or such. Even ASP.NET is simpler to work with than Node and friends, and that is telling a lot.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Well having a monopoly on the most popular and power programming platform of the planet, the web browser, will do that. In fact, remove the browser monopoly, and give it to Visual Basic, and in 3 years, VB will be the most popular language of the world.
- emerged 5y ago
  That’s the thing about JS. It’s popular because it was first and grew into a monopoly. The language itself is horrific. We are permanently stuck with a poorly designed language because it has momentum which can’t be overcome.

code_biologist 5y ago

Worse is better, it still seems.

laurent92 5y ago

But all these improvements should mean productivity improvements. But my engineers still aren’t able after 18 months on a React project to churn screens like we did with Freemarker+jQuery (=with bare hands, technology-wise). Every new tool should accelerate the pace, but JS doesn’t seem to deliver.

roofwellhams 5y ago
If you do it properly saves time. I'm pretty sure something you guys doing might be wrong. Or maybe previous code in jQuery was not great in terms of architecture.

bronlund 5y ago

The main reason JavaScript is still "popular", is that you are more or less forced to use it if you are targeting web browsers. And since web developers had to spend a lot of time learning that crap, combined with that whole DevOps culture, they ended up wanting to use JavaScript on the backend as well. Which is such a bad idea it's difficult to explain even. People are starting to realize that this whole JavaScript ecosystem was a huge mistake. The level of complexity a typical Node framework introduces, compared to the benefits you get from using it, is just silly. A typical web developer doesn't understand this fact and naturally feels stupid when trying to figure this thing out. Some are moving back to PHP or Ruby, others forward using Go or Elixir or such. Even ASP.NET is simpler to work with than Node and friends, and that is telling a lot.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Well having a monopoly on the most popular and power programming platform of the planet, the web browser, will do that. In fact, remove the browser monopoly, and give it to Visual Basic, and in 3 years, VB will be the most popular language of the world.

emerged 5y ago
That’s the thing about JS. It’s popular because it was first and grew into a monopoly. The language itself is horrific. We are permanently stuck with a poorly designed language because it has momentum which can’t be overcome.