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> Million ships <1kb brotli bundles after tree shaking and minification. Get fast bundle load times! The whole Javascript ecosystem needs to be burned to the g

by mavu 4y ago

> Million ships <1kb brotli bundles after tree shaking and minification. Get fast bundle load times! The whole Javascript ecosystem needs to be burned to the ground and never spoken of ever again.

rrishi 4y ago
Why did that quote cause this reaction from you ? Also, that reaction is so widespread at this point, it's become boring to hear it. It's a lot more interesting figuring out how the JS ecosystem has been resilient and has not gone down the drain (unlike a lot more "critically" acclaimed languages like Lisp)
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  Might it have something to do with being forced to use it?
  - rrishi 4y ago
    Using JS is not enforced on anyone. Several (successful) websites are powered by alternatives to JS. Infact, HN itself does not use JS. You could argue there is a lot more economic incentive to use JS to to the sheer number of jobs, but no one is being forced.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  we'll never know what could have happened to JavaScript if browsers supported more than a language (Lisp, for example, Brendan Eich plan was to write Scheme for the browser but then Java came out, Netscape had a deal with Sun already and so JavaScript was born) When things were not settled like they are today, Microsoft IE supported multiple languages and many people were using VBscript because it made more sense than JavaScript at the time. Also, many new languages that transpile to JavaScript exist, because, well, for many people JS simply sucks. I hear TypeScript is pretty big in that space. Who knows if JS will survive WASM that promise to free programmers from having to use a single language to write web apps.
  - rrishi 4y ago
    It will definitely be interesting to see how WASM changes the landscape. But if I were to bet my money, I'd say JS will survive well even in that age. The huge huge ecosystem and with TS being pretty conducive for large teams to use is just a pretty large momentum on JS's side.
carapace 4y ago
Pretty much. I keep asking people "Why not Elm?" ( https://elm-lang.org/ https://elm-lang.org/ ) but no one has a very good answer. The weird thing to me is that the two main customers or consumers of front-end programming (publishers and users) never see and do not care about the underlying language or implementation! Businesses and other orgs (schools, NGOs, etc.) as well as individuals (FB users, WordPress blogs, etc.) that publish sites/apps on the web and their visitors and users never see under the hood except when something goes wrong or they deliberately click "View Source", eh? Ergo, all this whole Javascript ecosystem is solely for the developers. It's like a giant and largely irrelevant MMORG that we play that produces mostly-working websites and apps almost as a side effect. "Change my mind?"
- jmull 4y ago
  The question is really “Why not Javascript, and if not, then why Elm?”
  - carapace 4y ago
    Not Javascript because it's objectively a lousy language. (Imagine if Eich had been allowed to embed Scheme!? What a wonderful world that would be. I'm not going to look if there's a Scheme implemented in JS, I assume there is.) An interesting question is why Elm instead of Scheme-in-JS or Scheme-in-WASM? The answer is to that is also the answer to "Why Elm?" Elm is extremely user-friendly, domain-specific language that makes it nigh impossible to write buggy code. You can write code that does the wrong thing, but it will do it correctly. In practice, what this means is that Elm web apps have had zero front-end bugs. If we allow that end-users and management do not care what system we use to make the website "go", then it's pretty obvious that they could make do with a much cheaper solution than the JS ecosystem. Elm is so simple and easy that anybody can use it to maintain their own web sites or web apps.

by mavu 4y ago

> Million ships <1kb brotli bundles after tree shaking and minification. Get fast bundle load times! The whole Javascript ecosystem needs to be burned to the ground and never spoken of ever again.

rrishi 4y ago

Why did that quote cause this reaction from you ? Also, that reaction is so widespread at this point, it's become boring to hear it. It's a lot more interesting figuring out how the JS ecosystem has been resilient and has not gone down the drain (unlike a lot more "critically" acclaimed languages like Lisp)

anonymoushn 4y ago
Might it have something to do with being forced to use it?
- rrishi 4y ago
  Using JS is not enforced on anyone. Several (successful) websites are powered by alternatives to JS. Infact, HN itself does not use JS. You could argue there is a lot more economic incentive to use JS to to the sheer number of jobs, but no one is being forced.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
we'll never know what could have happened to JavaScript if browsers supported more than a language (Lisp, for example, Brendan Eich plan was to write Scheme for the browser but then Java came out, Netscape had a deal with Sun already and so JavaScript was born) When things were not settled like they are today, Microsoft IE supported multiple languages and many people were using VBscript because it made more sense than JavaScript at the time. Also, many new languages that transpile to JavaScript exist, because, well, for many people JS simply sucks. I hear TypeScript is pretty big in that space. Who knows if JS will survive WASM that promise to free programmers from having to use a single language to write web apps.
- rrishi 4y ago
  It will definitely be interesting to see how WASM changes the landscape. But if I were to bet my money, I'd say JS will survive well even in that age. The huge huge ecosystem and with TS being pretty conducive for large teams to use is just a pretty large momentum on JS's side.

carapace 4y ago

Pretty much. I keep asking people "Why not Elm?" ( https://elm-lang.org/ https://elm-lang.org/ ) but no one has a very good answer. The weird thing to me is that the two main customers or consumers of front-end programming (publishers and users) never see and do not care about the underlying language or implementation! Businesses and other orgs (schools, NGOs, etc.) as well as individuals (FB users, WordPress blogs, etc.) that publish sites/apps on the web and their visitors and users never see under the hood except when something goes wrong or they deliberately click "View Source", eh? Ergo, all this whole Javascript ecosystem is solely for the developers. It's like a giant and largely irrelevant MMORG that we play that produces mostly-working websites and apps almost as a side effect. "Change my mind?"

jmull 4y ago
The question is really “Why not Javascript, and if not, then why Elm?”
- carapace 4y ago
  Not Javascript because it's objectively a lousy language. (Imagine if Eich had been allowed to embed Scheme!? What a wonderful world that would be. I'm not going to look if there's a Scheme implemented in JS, I assume there is.) An interesting question is why Elm instead of Scheme-in-JS or Scheme-in-WASM? The answer is to that is also the answer to "Why Elm?" Elm is extremely user-friendly, domain-specific language that makes it nigh impossible to write buggy code. You can write code that does the wrong thing, but it will do it correctly. In practice, what this means is that Elm web apps have had zero front-end bugs. If we allow that end-users and management do not care what system we use to make the website "go", then it's pretty obvious that they could make do with a much cheaper solution than the JS ecosystem. Elm is so simple and easy that anybody can use it to maintain their own web sites or web apps.