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> For people not following JS these might all seem like constantly reinventing past lessons, but there is a logical evolution happening here towards desktop-sty

by cxr 4y ago

> For people not following JS these might all seem like constantly reinventing past lessons, but there is a logical evolution happening here towards desktop-style performance Funny, my desktop itself is already written in JS, and supports/integrates with apps written that way, too, (and also that aren't), and that's been the case for a while now. And the same has been true of apps from the Mozilla platform lineage for even longer; Firefox has been an Electron-style app for 100+% of its lifetime, for example. Talk to any self-styled JS programmer for any length of time, though, and it's like these things don't even exist—like the latter was actually invented by the Electron folks, and the only thing that made JS development viable generally as a serious applications programming language is the trio of NPM+Webpack+React/React-alikes. It's overall not worth taking their opinions at face value. They tend to be the ones who are "not following JS". They're worshipping some weird toolchain cult and calling it JS. Indeed, judging by the compulsion to try to work around ostensible deficiencies in the language and deal in cargo cult advice (esp. e.g. concerning things like `==`/`===` and `this`, and insisting on NodeJS-isms like its non-standard `requires`) it's evident that they actually hate JS, despite what they're likely to say to the contrary.

notriddle 4y ago
> Firefox has been an Electron-style app for 100+% of its lifetime That's technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but horribly misleading. Firefox has always been mostly written in JavaScript, but not HTML [1]. A bunch of features that are being standardized now, like Web Components [2], are pretty similar to stuff that Firefox has used in non-standard form for decades. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL [2]: https://briangrinstead.com/blog/firefox-webcomponents/ https://briangrinstead.com/blog/firefox-webcomponents/
- cxr 4y ago
  1. Mozilla deprecated XUL a long time ago; it's been a long time since began the transition to favoring HTML over XUL within Firefox. 2. Even if Firefox were still 100% XUL today, it wouldn't matter. The context here is the use of JS as a general applications programming language and a signpost addressing the uninitiated who haven't been "following JS". Whether it's touching DOM nodes that are in the XUL namespace or the (X)HTML one (or whether it involves DOM nodes at all) is orthogonal. Bringing this up is the kind of change of subject that constitutes misdirection. 3. I don't know what you think the role of Web Components being like XBL plays in this conversation, but it strengthens the underlying point; it doesn't weaken it... Overall, this is a very odd response, to be generous. More accurately, it's horribly misleading to label my comment "technically correct[...] but horribly misleading".
  - notriddle 4y ago
    The point is that "JavaScript Applications" aren't just written with JavaScript, and so-called "JS frameworks" really aren't doing much with JavaScript (except, I suppose, JSX). Mostly, they're DOM enhancers, and Firefox has always been coded against its own internally-maintained, enhanced version of the DOM.
    - cxr 4y ago
      "The point"? So, again, my comments were not misleading. And these remarks don't provide any information that contradicts the claims I made. (You are, though, calling attention to what is actually misleading here—and tacitly supporting what was my argument all along, without seeming to realize it.)

by cxr 4y ago

notriddle 4y ago

> Firefox has been an Electron-style app for 100+% of its lifetime That's technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but horribly misleading. Firefox has always been mostly written in JavaScript, but not HTML [1]. A bunch of features that are being standardized now, like Web Components [2], are pretty similar to stuff that Firefox has used in non-standard form for decades. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL [2]: https://briangrinstead.com/blog/firefox-webcomponents/ https://briangrinstead.com/blog/firefox-webcomponents/

cxr 4y ago
1. Mozilla deprecated XUL a long time ago; it's been a long time since began the transition to favoring HTML over XUL within Firefox. 2. Even if Firefox were still 100% XUL today, it wouldn't matter. The context here is the use of JS as a general applications programming language and a signpost addressing the uninitiated who haven't been "following JS". Whether it's touching DOM nodes that are in the XUL namespace or the (X)HTML one (or whether it involves DOM nodes at all) is orthogonal. Bringing this up is the kind of change of subject that constitutes misdirection. 3. I don't know what you think the role of Web Components being like XBL plays in this conversation, but it strengthens the underlying point; it doesn't weaken it... Overall, this is a very odd response, to be generous. More accurately, it's horribly misleading to label my comment "technically correct[...] but horribly misleading".
- notriddle 4y ago
  The point is that "JavaScript Applications" aren't just written with JavaScript, and so-called "JS frameworks" really aren't doing much with JavaScript (except, I suppose, JSX). Mostly, they're DOM enhancers, and Firefox has always been coded against its own internally-maintained, enhanced version of the DOM.
  - cxr 4y ago
    "The point"? So, again, my comments were not misleading. And these remarks don't provide any information that contradicts the claims I made. (You are, though, calling attention to what is actually misleading here—and tacitly supporting what was my argument all along, without seeming to realize it.)