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The same thing was said when C was invented; everyone knew that no serious programmer would ever not know Assembly, and anyway, hand-written Assembly would alwa

by lihaoyi 14y ago

The same thing was said when C was invented; everyone knew that no serious programmer would ever not know Assembly, and anyway, hand-written Assembly would always be cleaner and more performant than generated C. All these novice programmers who don't know Assembly! In fact, the same thing was said when Assembly itself was invented: what kind of programmer wouldn't know the opcodes by heart, and need to use an assembler? Lazy buggers. That's not to say that all abstractions are good. It's really hard to make good abstractions, but you shouldn't be scared that people are trying hard things and sometimes failing. If we end up with something better than CSS that everyone ends up using, that doesn't sound like trouble, that sounds like awesome!

DigitalSea 14y ago
I agree there are great abstractions out there (as you pointed out), I just believe Coffeescript isn't one of those. C and Coffeescript are two completely different things, I don't forsee Coffeescript being anything more than just the new JS kid on the block it feels like a trend at present. I would hardly call Coffeescript a contender for a new language built on Javascript. I think CSS is easy enough as it is, I don't see how removing braces and using indentation would make it better, I don't mind the braces. If you want better CSS use LESS or Compass, both exceptionally great additions to CSS that don't detract away from the native way to do things. Having said all of that, I can see that my argument is somewhat flawed. I'm not against change, change is great and in the case of the whole Assembly > C change it was definitely a refreshing change for the industry I just think some things are good the way they are like CSS. If something were to come along for CSS that made our lives easier and things prettier that became the standard I wouldn't be against it at all.
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  I found an interesting article written by John Resig himself who posted an article in 2008 sharing the same concerns about Javascript abstractions: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-language-abstractions/ http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-language-abstractions/ His shares similar concerns that I do in the first few paragraphs of his article. To quote: In the case of these language abstractions you are gaining none of the benefit of learning the JavaScript language. When a leak in the abstraction occurs (and it will occur - just as it's bound to occur in any abstraction) what resources do you have, as a developer, to correct the problem? If you've learned nothing about JavaScript then you stand no chance in trying to repair, or work around, the issue.
  - chc 14y ago
    Just like before, isn't that just as true of C and ASM? I take Resig's point, but it really does seem to apply about as well to ASM — knowing it can be really handy when the going gets tough.

by lihaoyi 14y ago

DigitalSea 14y ago

I agree there are great abstractions out there (as you pointed out), I just believe Coffeescript isn't one of those. C and Coffeescript are two completely different things, I don't forsee Coffeescript being anything more than just the new JS kid on the block it feels like a trend at present. I would hardly call Coffeescript a contender for a new language built on Javascript. I think CSS is easy enough as it is, I don't see how removing braces and using indentation would make it better, I don't mind the braces. If you want better CSS use LESS or Compass, both exceptionally great additions to CSS that don't detract away from the native way to do things. Having said all of that, I can see that my argument is somewhat flawed. I'm not against change, change is great and in the case of the whole Assembly > C change it was definitely a refreshing change for the industry I just think some things are good the way they are like CSS. If something were to come along for CSS that made our lives easier and things prettier that became the standard I wouldn't be against it at all.

DigitalSea 14y ago
I found an interesting article written by John Resig himself who posted an article in 2008 sharing the same concerns about Javascript abstractions: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-language-abstractions/ http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-language-abstractions/ His shares similar concerns that I do in the first few paragraphs of his article. To quote: In the case of these language abstractions you are gaining none of the benefit of learning the JavaScript language. When a leak in the abstraction occurs (and it will occur - just as it's bound to occur in any abstraction) what resources do you have, as a developer, to correct the problem? If you've learned nothing about JavaScript then you stand no chance in trying to repair, or work around, the issue.
- chc 14y ago
  Just like before, isn't that just as true of C and ASM? I take Resig's point, but it really does seem to apply about as well to ASM — knowing it can be really handy when the going gets tough.