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For all of the JavaScript frameworks/libraries/toolchains that were supposed to solve front-end development woes, we could have had a language that actually did
by lenerdenator 2y ago
For all of the JavaScript frameworks/libraries/toolchains that were supposed to solve front-end development woes, we could have had a language that actually did that.
- te_chris 2y agoElixir
- skrtskrt 2y agoseriously Google probably put a couple billion person-hours just into V8 optimizations, we could have just had a language that makes sense, is efficient, and doesn't have endless footguns.
- tiffanyh 2y agoLua would be a strong contender.
- tmountain 2y agoI think a lot of people would reject any dynamically typed language at this stage.
- thiht 2y agoA few years ago before ES2015 sure. But JavaScript has come a long way, it’s a much more pleasant language to work with nowadays. Typescript also plays a strong role with that. Lua used to be marginally better than JS, now JS is better and it’s not even close. Also Lua metatables suck.
- tiffanyh 2y agoWould you mind giving examples of why. Genuinely curious. Would below be examples you were thinking of: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1022560/subtle-differences-between-javascript-and-lua https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1022560/subtle-differenc...
- o_m 2y agoThat would just end up being another Adobe Flash which one company controls. Always bet on web standards.
- fwip 2y agoProbably not billions. Each person (at a 40-hour workweek) works about 2000 hours a year. V8 has been around for about 16 years. 1 billion hours would mean (1 billion / (16*2000)) = 31,250 people full-time on V8 optimization. A google search seems to suggest that the actual headcount for the full V8 team (not just the optimization team) is probably in the 3-digits.
- lenerdenator 2y ago> V8 has been around for about 16 years. Huh, well, clearly that's impossible. It was first released in 2008, and I'm still an 18-year-old with a full head of hair, faith in humanity, and hope for the future, so it can only have been around for a year or two at most.
- wslh 2y agoI don't think both things compare well: optimizations are a clear target for software and computer science professionals while languages add a personal preference: I love Python but don't like C++ while I prefer Rust over Go.
- sa46 2y agoThat's precisely what the creator of V8 did; he created Dart. See the context from munificent, who currently works on Dart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33524437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33524437
- dbbk 2y agoPretty sure big Google products like Maps are written in Dart, no?
- dwaltrip 2y agoThere are two kinds of languages: ones that everyone complains about and ones that no one uses.
- AlienRobot 2y agoImagine the world if <script type="text/python">
- adamddev1 2y agoThat's much scarier to me.
- AlienRobot 2y agoOkay, what if we just use Java instead of Java"script"?
- hombre_fatal 2y agoThe reason why there's churn in the web ecosystem isn't because Javascript is missing some minor syntax changes that Python has. It's because UI development is a constant workshop for discovering better abstractions, particularly in bridging the gap between server and client-side code in the browser.
- AlienRobot 2y agoPersonally, I think the real problem with the web ecosystem is HTML. HTML is for printed documents as web "pages," literally. It even has <figure> which is for "fig. 1" kind of things. HTML is so bad that we NEED Javascript because CSS isn't enough. For example, there is no way to define a layout in HTML for different screen sizes and then SEPARATELY define the content of that layout. Nor is there a way to define in HTML that a div should jump from one part of the screen to another if there isn't enough space. We spent years telling the lie that we're supposed to split semantics and presentation, but in reality CSS simply doesn't provide enough power to actually ignore the structure, since you can't tell div1 to align itself to div2 if div2 isn't an ancestor or sibling of div1. Now every website looks extremely simple because if they made it even a tiny bit more complicated it would be impossible to make the flexboxes wrap right with just CSS. We need HTML2.
- tmountain 2y agoElm was a pretty noble attempt—all things considered.
- codethief 2y agoDoes Elm support SSR?
- oDot 2y agoThe evolution is Gleam + Lustre (its main FE framework). You get all of Gleam's advantages compared to TS (simple, truly type safe, errors as values, exhaustive match, etc), and Lustre is great because you get an Elm that can be run on both the client and server, using whatever fits that specific part of your website best (unlike HTMX or LiveView which are server-only). Wrote a blog post about it: https://blog.nestful.app/p/gleams-lustre-is-frontend-developments https://blog.nestful.app/p/gleams-lustre-is-frontend-develop...
- tmountain 2y agoDidn’t know… awesome!