3 ms·

JavaScript needs to retire, says Douglas Crockford, JSON creator

17 points by redbell 4y ago

npalli 4y ago
Looks like Crockford is suggesting a replacement language on the lines of E [1], something which he had a hand in developing. First time hearing about this, thought it was a typo in the original article. Looks neat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)
therealmarv 4y ago
Strange the article does not mention WebAssembly which can fulfil this dreams.
- RadixDLT 4y ago
  Hackers Increasingly Using WebAssembly Coded Cryptominers to Evade Detection
  - anony23 4y ago
    It's easy to detect...
- cityzen 4y ago
  But it does… “The advent of WebAssembly, a binary format that can be targeted by languages including C, C++, C# and Rust, is another innovation that may undermine JavaScript’s dominance.”
xxprogamerxy 4y ago
Dart is probably the best contender for 'replacing' JavaScript right now. Dart's Type- and Null-safety, built in support for both JIT and AOT compilation, great dev tools, and the rapidly growing ecosystem make it a delight to work with. I can actually see Google shipping Chrome with the Dart VM in addition to V8 a few years down the line.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I can actually see Google shipping Chrome with the Dart VM in addition to V8 a few years down the line. It was called “Dartium” and it was discontinued with Dart 2.
  - xxprogamerxy 4y ago
    Just checked it out, you're right. They actually explicitly said: > In order to do what's best for our users and the web, and not just Google Chrome, we will focus our web efforts on compiling Dart to JavaScript. We have decided not to integrate the Dart VM into Chrome. https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html But I guess with the adoption of WebAssembly, that won't really matter anyway.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      Serious question but where's the proposal to allow WebAssembly to interact with the DOM? I'm assuming it's in the works somewhere...
docmechanic 4y ago
Clicked the link in the article to the E language, but lost interest after an intro quote to Milton Friedman. Much prefer the animal mascots that started on O'reilly technical book covers, I believe.
tapatio 4y ago
What about Typescript? Retire that too?
pipeline_peak 4y ago
> First, we don’t have the next language yet. It needs to be a minimal capability-based actor language People tend to think programming languages that enforce design patterns and programming styles steer development towards clean design and safety. The problem is, in the industry no one actually uses them. Instead we get combative code that goes against these principles. Java and C# are popular examples of this, they breed natively thought out procedural statements in static classes that are really just namespaces. Of course in the business logic world, when 50 different people touch an old class definition, it becomes a utility class / partial OOP hybrid. Usually this design choice is biased towards the initial one.
FractalHQ 4y ago
As a Typescript developer, I have long retired my use of JavaScript… and won’t touch it unless I have to (in which case I’m likely converting it). And I absolutely love Typescript. JavaScript is a solved problem thanks to TS, and in my opinion, should almost never be used unless strictly necessary in 2022. The fact that JS is still used for new projects on purpose bothers me about as much as the fact that only one comment in this thread mentions Typescript so far…
- swatcoder 4y ago
  TypeScript is great: a tremendous improvement over JavaScript and a boon to web development since it’s so easy to transition into it. But Crockford is looking farther out here. Languages like E are designed for safe concurrency first, which is going to be a huge deal as we continue to see an explosion of processing cores on the client end and highly distributed backend deployments through infrastructure like serverless platforms. You can implement that model with TypeScript and some discipline, but languages that treat it as central part of their design can require less discipline and can provide smarter automated optimizations. I don’t know that E is going to establish itself in that space, but it’s the space we’re headed towards and TypeScript isn’t quite the most natural thing to use there.
chaimanmeow 4y ago
Crockford wiki is a must read, he is a great soul: Quoting his current (8/9/22) wikipedia page: =="Good, not Evil"== "In 2002, in reference to President George Bush's war on "evildoers", Crockford started releasing his JSMin software under a custom license, which he created by adding the requirement "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" to the open source MIT License. This clause was carried over to JSMin-PHP, a variation of JSMin by Ryan Grove. This software was hosted on Google Code until December 2009 when, due to the additional clause, Google determined that the license was not compliant with the definition of free and open source software, which does not permit any restriction on how software may be used ...." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford

17 points by redbell 4y ago

Looks like Crockford is suggesting a replacement language on the lines of E [1], something which he had a hand in developing. First time hearing about this, thought it was a typo in the original article. Looks neat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)

therealmarv 4y ago

Strange the article does not mention WebAssembly which can fulfil this dreams.

RadixDLT 4y ago
Hackers Increasingly Using WebAssembly Coded Cryptominers to Evade Detection
- anony23 4y ago
  It's easy to detect...
cityzen 4y ago
But it does… “The advent of WebAssembly, a binary format that can be targeted by languages including C, C++, C# and Rust, is another innovation that may undermine JavaScript’s dominance.”

xxprogamerxy 4y ago

Dart is probably the best contender for 'replacing' JavaScript right now. Dart's Type- and Null-safety, built in support for both JIT and AOT compilation, great dev tools, and the rapidly growing ecosystem make it a delight to work with. I can actually see Google shipping Chrome with the Dart VM in addition to V8 a few years down the line.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I can actually see Google shipping Chrome with the Dart VM in addition to V8 a few years down the line. It was called “Dartium” and it was discontinued with Dart 2.
- xxprogamerxy 4y ago
  Just checked it out, you're right. They actually explicitly said: > In order to do what's best for our users and the web, and not just Google Chrome, we will focus our web efforts on compiling Dart to JavaScript. We have decided not to integrate the Dart VM into Chrome. https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html But I guess with the adoption of WebAssembly, that won't really matter anyway.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Serious question but where's the proposal to allow WebAssembly to interact with the DOM? I'm assuming it's in the works somewhere...

docmechanic 4y ago

Clicked the link in the article to the E language, but lost interest after an intro quote to Milton Friedman. Much prefer the animal mascots that started on O'reilly technical book covers, I believe.

tapatio 4y ago

What about Typescript? Retire that too?

pipeline_peak 4y ago

> First, we don’t have the next language yet. It needs to be a minimal capability-based actor language People tend to think programming languages that enforce design patterns and programming styles steer development towards clean design and safety. The problem is, in the industry no one actually uses them. Instead we get combative code that goes against these principles. Java and C# are popular examples of this, they breed natively thought out procedural statements in static classes that are really just namespaces. Of course in the business logic world, when 50 different people touch an old class definition, it becomes a utility class / partial OOP hybrid. Usually this design choice is biased towards the initial one.

FractalHQ 4y ago

As a Typescript developer, I have long retired my use of JavaScript… and won’t touch it unless I have to (in which case I’m likely converting it). And I absolutely love Typescript. JavaScript is a solved problem thanks to TS, and in my opinion, should almost never be used unless strictly necessary in 2022. The fact that JS is still used for new projects on purpose bothers me about as much as the fact that only one comment in this thread mentions Typescript so far…

swatcoder 4y ago
TypeScript is great: a tremendous improvement over JavaScript and a boon to web development since it’s so easy to transition into it. But Crockford is looking farther out here. Languages like E are designed for safe concurrency first, which is going to be a huge deal as we continue to see an explosion of processing cores on the client end and highly distributed backend deployments through infrastructure like serverless platforms. You can implement that model with TypeScript and some discipline, but languages that treat it as central part of their design can require less discipline and can provide smarter automated optimizations. I don’t know that E is going to establish itself in that space, but it’s the space we’re headed towards and TypeScript isn’t quite the most natural thing to use there.

chaimanmeow 4y ago

Crockford wiki is a must read, he is a great soul: Quoting his current (8/9/22) wikipedia page: =="Good, not Evil"== "In 2002, in reference to President George Bush's war on "evildoers", Crockford started releasing his JSMin software under a custom license, which he created by adding the requirement "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" to the open source MIT License. This clause was carried over to JSMin-PHP, a variation of JSMin by Ryan Grove. This software was hosted on Google Code until December 2009 when, due to the additional clause, Google determined that the license was not compliant with the definition of free and open source software, which does not permit any restriction on how software may be used ...." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford