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Certainly nodejs and npm getting out of hand was a wakeup call for me, about 15 years ago. I started to view it has a personal failure when I brought in that f

Certainly nodejs and npm getting out of hand was a wakeup call for me, about 15 years ago. I started to view it has a personal failure when I brought in that first dependency, which meant needing all of the packaging and organization just to use that first package.json, rather than just having plain js loaded from a script tag.

999900000999 2y ago
I have a side project right now where I tried my hardest to use anything aside from NodeJS. Even though it's just for my personal consumption, and I doubt more than five or six people will ever see it, I ended up having to use NodeJS and HTML because it's simply the best solution. Imagine an alternate timeline where Google decided to offer other languages as first class citizens in the browser. Could you imagine Golang or Dart. No compiling down to JS, just running natively.
- strawhatguy 2y ago
  Mozilla (Eich) wrote JS, and specifically Microsoft wrote the XMLHttpRequest, which allowed Google to exist. And supposedly WASM is to be that thing, so any language can compile down to it. Hasn't totally worked out I guess. A browser would have to take the leap to be WASM-only, and compile even JS to it. I'm doing backend work mostly right now. If I start some other project, I'll probably try using htmx and tailwindcss as my two js script tags, and the rest will be controlled from the backend.
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    I'm more thinking Chrome could ship with a Golang/Dart VM where apps could run. WASM is neat though. Tends to ship with mega blobs for now
    - BrendanEich 2y ago
      See https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/1260733952160985089 https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/1260733952160985089. Google, especially with the antitrust trouble they are in, is not going to try for an "ActiveX redux" act here. They definitively renounced trying to ram Dart into the Web standards here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150328124454/https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150328124454/https://news.dart... (yes, they took it down so Wayback to the rescue) The GC barrier overhead is too damn high!
- BrendanEich 2y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42838110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42838110 (downthread). Polyglot VMs are hard to pull off and always have a _primum inter pares_ (C# for .NET, Java for the JVM, JS for the JS+wasm "Web VM").
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    Thank you for JavaScript! Your simple to learn programming language is what took me from a broke college dropout to six figures in about 3 years. It's the first programming language that actually stuck with me, even though one of the senior developers at my first salaried job actively hated it. He was an old Java guy though. Do you feel that JavaScript is always a capable tool for the job? At a lot of companies, at least when I started programming 10 or 12 years ago, we'd have a bunch of front-end people who are nifty with JavaScript and just tell them to write NodeJS server code. JavaScript is still my go to language when I just need to get something done. With Python a close second. C# has it's place for larger projects ( as well as stable employment). I'm actually a bit excited for WASM. For a good while you had companies shipping plugins to extend the browser, first Adobe with flash, and then unity with their Unity Web plugin. Which lasted about 2 years before they started building native web builds. Now everything is compiling straight to JS or JS+WASM.
    - BrendanEich 2y ago
      Thanks for the kind words. JS is not the hammer for all nails, but ubiquity means it will be used to pound in screws and bolts more than it ought to be. I fire up Node but also Python from command line; Wolfram Alpha in browser. Wasm was the victor in old plugin vs. integrated PNaCl style VM vs. polyglot VM battles. JS VMs (ubiquitous again, and see write barrier cost of poly-GC vs. mono-GC down the page in my linked comment) rather more easily became polyglot via WebAssembly as second syntax low enough to target from other languages' compilers. Still more to do on the Wasm roadmap. Always more to do...
      - BrendanEich 2y ago
        Friend shared https://maxima-on-wasm.pages.dev/ https://maxima-on-wasm.pages.dev/, very cool to see old Lisps live again thanks to Wasm. "Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter."

999900000999 2y ago

I have a side project right now where I tried my hardest to use anything aside from NodeJS. Even though it's just for my personal consumption, and I doubt more than five or six people will ever see it, I ended up having to use NodeJS and HTML because it's simply the best solution. Imagine an alternate timeline where Google decided to offer other languages as first class citizens in the browser. Could you imagine Golang or Dart. No compiling down to JS, just running natively.

strawhatguy 2y ago
Mozilla (Eich) wrote JS, and specifically Microsoft wrote the XMLHttpRequest, which allowed Google to exist. And supposedly WASM is to be that thing, so any language can compile down to it. Hasn't totally worked out I guess. A browser would have to take the leap to be WASM-only, and compile even JS to it. I'm doing backend work mostly right now. If I start some other project, I'll probably try using htmx and tailwindcss as my two js script tags, and the rest will be controlled from the backend.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  I'm more thinking Chrome could ship with a Golang/Dart VM where apps could run. WASM is neat though. Tends to ship with mega blobs for now
  - BrendanEich 2y ago
    See https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/1260733952160985089 https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/1260733952160985089. Google, especially with the antitrust trouble they are in, is not going to try for an "ActiveX redux" act here. They definitively renounced trying to ram Dart into the Web standards here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150328124454/https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150328124454/https://news.dart... (yes, they took it down so Wayback to the rescue) The GC barrier overhead is too damn high!
BrendanEich 2y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42838110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42838110 (downthread). Polyglot VMs are hard to pull off and always have a _primum inter pares_ (C# for .NET, Java for the JVM, JS for the JS+wasm "Web VM").
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Thank you for JavaScript! Your simple to learn programming language is what took me from a broke college dropout to six figures in about 3 years. It's the first programming language that actually stuck with me, even though one of the senior developers at my first salaried job actively hated it. He was an old Java guy though. Do you feel that JavaScript is always a capable tool for the job? At a lot of companies, at least when I started programming 10 or 12 years ago, we'd have a bunch of front-end people who are nifty with JavaScript and just tell them to write NodeJS server code. JavaScript is still my go to language when I just need to get something done. With Python a close second. C# has it's place for larger projects ( as well as stable employment). I'm actually a bit excited for WASM. For a good while you had companies shipping plugins to extend the browser, first Adobe with flash, and then unity with their Unity Web plugin. Which lasted about 2 years before they started building native web builds. Now everything is compiling straight to JS or JS+WASM.
  - BrendanEich 2y ago
    Thanks for the kind words. JS is not the hammer for all nails, but ubiquity means it will be used to pound in screws and bolts more than it ought to be. I fire up Node but also Python from command line; Wolfram Alpha in browser. Wasm was the victor in old plugin vs. integrated PNaCl style VM vs. polyglot VM battles. JS VMs (ubiquitous again, and see write barrier cost of poly-GC vs. mono-GC down the page in my linked comment) rather more easily became polyglot via WebAssembly as second syntax low enough to target from other languages' compilers. Still more to do on the Wasm roadmap. Always more to do...
    - BrendanEich 2y ago
      Friend shared https://maxima-on-wasm.pages.dev/ https://maxima-on-wasm.pages.dev/, very cool to see old Lisps live again thanks to Wasm. "Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter."