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I am 100% with Carmack. Sorry, guy. JavaScript is crap. The reasons that JavaScript sucks have been hashed to death in the past. If you are already disagreeing

• chris_wot 14y ago
  Yeah, no one is "telling" John Carmack et al. to do anything. Unless you consider making an argument to be ordering folks around, in which case may I suggest you listen to this guy John who recently talked about JavaScript...
  • tumult 14y ago
    Don't hate JavaScript. It's our generation's Apple II.
    • chris_wot 14y ago
      And? He's not ordering anyone around, he's urging him to consider others may find it useful. There's a world of difference between that and a direct order. Sorry you can't see that!
    • pirateking 14y ago
      It is not. It is closer to our generations HyperCard (but not nearly as cool). The iPad COULD have been our generation's Apple II if it came bundled with an un-sandboxed Xcode iOS app and Terminal... dreams of an alternate universe.
    • tsahyt 14y ago
      Since the Apple II was all in all just very basic easily programmable hardware for home users, I say no. Our generation's Apple II is the ARM or any ARM based development board. It's ubiquitous and it's (at least compared to the x86 architecture) rather easy to program yet very powerful. Those are the reasons why the Apple II bred good programmers like almost no other machine in it's day. Comparing a high-level language with tons of abstractions to Applesoft BASIC or pure 6502 Assembler is rather appalling to me. The reason why people who coded for the Apple II and similar machines became such great programmers is because they got a fundamental understanding of the hardware from it, which is something that JavaScript will never give you. It's not just that tinkering with low level stuff opens up new ways to be creative with the technology, but it does in fact make you a better programmer on all levels. Additionally, JavaScript is (in my opinion obviously) an absolutely terrible language, with which we're just stuck with because it happens to be the only one that's well supported by all the big browsers of today.
      • ajuc 14y ago
        ARM is cool, but you cannot give a kid ARM based computer, and expect it to program anything without setting up programming einvironment first. Do you expect this kid to cross compile on PC? Or maybe it should set up gcc on this device? Maybe raspbery pi will change that, but for now the kid won't even know how to compile anything. The best bet is probably python, which isn't much better in "closeness to metal" than javascript.
        • tsahyt 14y ago
          I'm a bit too young to know how well the Apple II was documented for programming. However, people like Jordan Mechner (creator of the original Prince of Persia) were spitting out 6502 assembler code at a rather young age, weren't they? And it's not like that's a trivial task. Mind you, there was no internet as we know it today with StackOverflow and other resources, in fact, the internet was still pretty much in it's infancy. I agree there's a lack of ways to develop directly on ARM, but that should change pretty soon with the Raspberry Pi as you point out, or any other such platform. For the rest of us there are development boards which usually come with quite a bit of documentation on their usage. Anybody determined enough to learn that stuff will be capable to do so, I think. Python again is more like a magic wand that does most things for you. When I learned coding I constantly kept wondering how those calls actually worked and what they did. I just couldn't accept that say, print just prints stuff to the screen. I was wondering how it did that. I finally gave up on questioning at the edge of the ALU. The reason I told this is, that I think a high level language like Python will teach you a lot about how to structure problems into smaller parts and will improve your "algorithmic thinking", but you'll still be pretty clueless about what's actually happening behind the code. And exactly that sort of hacking on a lower level is what comes to my mind when I think of computers like the Apple II, which were basically just glorified calculators by today's standards.
    • bradleyjg 14y ago
      The problem with javascript is similar to the problem with BASIC. The wise elders back then tried to warn us that if you learned to program with BASIC it would take years (if ever) to unlearn those bad habits, but we ignored them. The result is thousands upon thousands of programmers who produce nothing but spaghetti code. Now we have an entire generation of programmers for whom statically typed languages, and compiled languages in general, are completely alien. There is a time and a place for dynamic typing (just as there is a time and place for GOTO) but to start with a language like javascipt inculcates habits that will take years to undue.
      • hmahncke 14y ago
        I really thought where this comment was going was >> The wise elders back then tried to warn us that if you learned to program with BASIC it would take years (if ever) to unlearn those bad habits, but we ignored them. The result is thousands upon thousands of programmers, and the creation of every interesting company from google to iD. That's not a bug, it's a feature. >> weird...
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      • mappu 14y ago
        Unfortunately there's a gap between popular dynamic scripting languages - PHP, Python, Ruby - and popular static compiled languages - C++, Java, C# - where some imperative, statically and strongly typed, garbage collected and native-compiled language should exist. For a first language, i think it shouldn't force any particular paradigm on you, nor require you to understand things at the C-level of abstraction. Legacy VB almost fills this gap, but unfortunately the syntax is a little embarassing. Actionscript is a perhaps closer.
• secoif 14y ago
  Talented people like Carmack have the potential to make things less crap, if they took an interest. If they don't take an interest, things will remain the way they are for a lot longer. John Carmack should join the Chrome team.
  • chucknelson 14y ago
    One person, even Carmack, is no match for standards bodies like the W3C. Google itself is already trying to push different web technologies like Dart and WebM, but it's a very slow burn. I wouldn't say there is a lack of vision or new ideas.
• drcode 14y ago
  Of course javascript is crap... ...however, this is also true of every other part of web programming: HTML and CSS are similarly a mixture of academic navel gazing nonsense and ugly cludges designed by committee. The fact is that HTML5 is still really only version 0.1 of where web programming should be- But this doesn't mean it isn't improving. The fact is that having portable code snippets that can execute within a website is extremely powerful and right now javascript is essentially the only way to accomplish this. You don't have to love javascript to love what it allows you to do.
  • mindcrime 14y ago
    The fact is that HTML5 is still really only version 0.1 of where web programming should be That's one way of looking at it. Another point of view is that HTML already does far more than it needs to, to serve as a perfectly adequate hypertext format. It could be argued that it's a mistake to try to morph the web-browser into a crappy OS and / or a poor man's UI remoting technology, when we already have perfectly good operating systems and technologies for remoting out UIs or delivering applications to remote locations. Perhaps instead of trying to make the browser a Swiss-Army-Do-Everything-Polymorphic-FrankensteinsMonster-OperatingSystem-XServer-ApplicationRuntime, we should just use the browser to browser hypertext, and hand off handling of these other issues to purpose specific software that was designed to do that.
    • daleharvey 14y ago
      we already have triple figures of good operating systems and technologies for remoting out UIs We only have one web stack, it may differ a little at the bleeding edge, but that the core its the same stack deliverable to pretty much every user and device in the world. (disclaimer, I work on aforementioned Firefox OS :)
• user24 14y ago
  > The reasons that JavaScript sucks have been hashed to death in the past. If you are already disagreeing with me, then anything I say here won't change your mind, because you've already heard the arguments before and built up a repertoire of responses. You're implying I'm closed-minded because I have an opinion. I would actually like to hear your reasons for saying JS is crap/silly.
• azakai 14y ago
  > And unsecured access to the graphics stack is a terrible idea. No one gives you unsecured access to the graphics stack. WebGL shaders are parsed and modified for security (for example, inserting things like bounds checks). (Of course, there are security risks with any new technology.)
  • tumult 14y ago
    I didn't know that. Thanks. But I'm not so much worried about bounds checks as I am other obscure forms of overflow or corruption in graphics drivers. They barely work for things that are built specifically for them.
    • TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
      To be fair, some user-agents, such as the Blackberry PlayBook, ask for permission from the user to use WebGL when a site wants it.
      • novalis 14y ago
        That only transfers the decision to run it, doesn't make it any more safe. You can override anything, that doesn't "clean" it or make beneficial by default.
    • azakai 14y ago
      Bounds checks were just an example. Another example: When you get bufferData in WebGL, it doesn't just call glBufferData with those arguments. It carefully checks those arguments for validity, including against the current state (currently bound buffer, its size, etc.). This ensures that the GL driver only sees calls with valid, reasonable info. It does incur a performance hit, but as you can see from WebGL demos on the web, it isn't terrible. GL drivers in general are pretty complex. But the very small subset of GL that WebGL uses - both in terms of the commands used, and the content it passes in those commands as just mentioned - is much simpler to secure. Browser vendors have been working with GL driver makers on safety for a while now to improve things further. Again, are there security risks? Sure, any new technology has them. JavaScript engines and video codecs have them, exploits for those are discovered all the time, but without those our browsers would be much less useful. The same is true for WebGL.
• lazerwalker 14y ago
  Do you not see the rhetorical problem with what you're saying? To come in here with a controversial statement and preemptively write off all oppositional viewpoints is to act in exactly the same way you deride pro-JavaScript proponents for allegedly behaving.
• batista 14y ago
  >If you are already disagreeing with me, then anything I say here won't change your mind, because you've already heard the arguments before and built up a repertoire of responses. Really? Ever stopped to think it's you that is biased, so much that you pre-emptively null any possible responses with the above cheap trick?
• runjake 14y ago
  It seems to me like you missed the point of his letter to Carmack entirely. He's saying it doesn't have to be the greatest tool for the job, he's saying it's a good intro for would-be programmers and dabblers. And don't give me that "when you were born" line. It's built to hinder fresh, new ideas and perspectives. Signed, A dinosaur who tries to refrain from using the "When I was your age..." line.
  • ori_b 14y ago
    > He's saying it doesn't have to be the greatest tool for the job, he's saying it's a good intro for would-be programmers and dabblers. Perhaps. But we should be able to do better. Pygame, for example -- The example I found[1] looks quite nice and easy to use: [1]http://www.willmcgugan.com/blog/tech/2007/6/4/opengl-sample-code-for-pygame/ http://www.willmcgugan.com/blog/tech/2007/6/4/opengl-sample-...
    • slurgfest 14y ago
      Pygame is effectively just SDL. If you are going to depend on OpenGL anyway, Pyglet is even nicer for newbies
    • allait 14y ago
      Pygame can be a pain to install sometimes. Things that package dependencies into a single binary (like Love2D) are easier to setup, but often lack the out-of-the-box interactivity that JavaScript tools provide.
  • Keyframe 14y ago
    Javascript is the new BASIC then? If so, it is better.
• bryanlarsen 14y ago
  He's not telling Carmack to use a web browser scripting engine. In fact he specifically says "Nobody pretends that the next AAA-title will be written in JavaScript."
  • pegisys 14y ago
    I didn't watch the keynote so I don't know exactly what was said but, Carmack is in the business of trying to make AAA titles. I wonder in what context Carmack's comments are in.
• duaneb 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure the compiled graphics code is sandboxed making an actual crash (theoretically) impossible.
  • pgeorgi 14y ago
    With WebGL shaders? Rather unlikely. What we can expect is hardened shader compilers in the graphics drivers. In 2018 or so.
• daleharvey 14y ago
  The post has absolutely no mention about the quality of JavaScript. It is arguing that Web technologies are 'good enough' for an extremely large class of problems, and that they have massive advantages due to a lowe barrier to entry and ubiquity. You might want to argue those points, but this is a complete strawman.
• zurn 14y ago
  > JavaScript is crap You don't have to write JS though, just use something compiles to it. > And unsecured access to the graphics stack is a terrible idea. Flash already randomly causes my GPU to crash Letting only safe operations through to the driver is the biggest part of a WebGL implementation's job. Hopefully HTML 5, WebGL, WebRTC etc can replace Flash. I'd much rather trust those jobs to Chrome than to Flash (Flash provides accelerated 3d too these days btw.) There's lot to be done still, and you can score bug bounties from Mozilla and Google if you manage to poke holes in Chrome/Firefox :)
• greggman 14y ago
  I've been writing "writing simulation engines and 3D rendering engines since around when you were born" and I love JavaScript. Like most C/C++/ASM programmers I hated it at first and I'm under no delusion that it's going to replace C/C++/ASM any time soon. But like many say, "the right tool for the job". By any measure Lua is complete shit and yet Carmack made it popular by using as the glue for most of his games. JavaScript does many things extremely elegantly and the environment it runs in is fun, cross platform and accessible. It's fun to make things in JavaScript the same way it was fun to make programs on my Atari 800, Commodore 64. You type something and click "refresh" and it's up. No downloading a 2-4gig dev environment. No finding 4 SDKs you need to install. No figuring out how to get your image libraries to link. No worrying about how to get the initial screen up, And even better, when it works you just send you friends a link. No installing. No worries if they are on OSX and you are on Windows or Linux. Are you going to write Shadow of the Colossus in JavaScript? Probably not. But ICO? Yea, no problem. Any Zelda to date? Sure. 80-90% of all games ever shipped would run just fine in JavaScript at this point in time. Very few games actually need every once of perf. > And unsecured access to the graphics stack is a terrible idea. WebGL does not provide unsecured access to the graphics stack so I'm not sure what this BS remark was about.
  • podperson 14y ago
    Great response. I assumed the unseecured thing is in reference to the security issues in webgl which are presumably unintended.
  • hyperlogic 14y ago
    > "By any measure Lua is complete shit and yet Carmack made it popular by using as the glue for most of his games." This just isn't the case. In recent games iD software has moved away from using scripting languages at all. Later in the same talk, Carmack praises iOS for reversing the trend against Java and bringing back native languages. Saying that native languages are the only way you can get predictable performance for things like smooth scrolling.
  • bsg75 14y ago
    > By any measure Lua is complete shit ... Reasons? Measures?