6 ms·

Don't hate JavaScript. It's our generation's Apple II.

by tumult 14y ago

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.
    - ajuc 14y ago
      I had C64. I "programmed" in BASIC. Which means I typed in programs from manual (which was in German, and I couldn't understand it), and changed stuff to see what will be the effect. I've never went into 6502 assembler (I had no books for it), but I learned that I want to be a programmer, and that was what was important. When I got PC I tried QBasic, Turbo Pascal, Assembler, C, Delphi, and everything else. Distance from metal was never issue for me. The issue was the idea I had, and the end product I wanted to achieve. Hell, I've written small logic game with Turbo Basic, that was one huge for loop (with counter that went to 99999999 or sth like that, because I didn't knew of loops without countter) with 5 screens of nested if then elses inside. It was about guessing words letter by letter, and I didn't knew about arrays, so I had 5 variables A1$, a2$, a3$, a4$ and a5$ for letters. It was horrible, but I didn't knew it. And it worked. I've shown it in school, and to my parents, and I was a wizard. The methodology, and style conventions came later. I think of 8bit computers as gateway drugs that invited people to become programmers. Currently the closest things we have is javascript+canvas, or some scripting languages in game modding scene. Nobody[1] really writes assembler today proffesionaly anyway. It is too hairy now, and we have better compilers. Don't push it on kids. [1] by nobody I mean almost nobody, and yes, arm assembler is better, but still show me a big application written in it
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.

Don't hate JavaScript. It's our generation's Apple II.

by tumult 14y ago

Don't hate JavaScript. It's our generation's Apple II.

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.
  - ajuc 14y ago
    I had C64. I "programmed" in BASIC. Which means I typed in programs from manual (which was in German, and I couldn't understand it), and changed stuff to see what will be the effect. I've never went into 6502 assembler (I had no books for it), but I learned that I want to be a programmer, and that was what was important. When I got PC I tried QBasic, Turbo Pascal, Assembler, C, Delphi, and everything else. Distance from metal was never issue for me. The issue was the idea I had, and the end product I wanted to achieve. Hell, I've written small logic game with Turbo Basic, that was one huge for loop (with counter that went to 99999999 or sth like that, because I didn't knew of loops without countter) with 5 screens of nested if then elses inside. It was about guessing words letter by letter, and I didn't knew about arrays, so I had 5 variables A1$, a2$, a3$, a4$ and a5$ for letters. It was horrible, but I didn't knew it. And it worked. I've shown it in school, and to my parents, and I was a wizard. The methodology, and style conventions came later. I think of 8bit computers as gateway drugs that invited people to become programmers. Currently the closest things we have is javascript+canvas, or some scripting languages in game modding scene. Nobody[1] really writes assembler today proffesionaly anyway. It is too hairy now, and we have better compilers. Don't push it on kids. [1] by nobody I mean almost nobody, and yes, arm assembler is better, but still show me a big application written in it

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.