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A completely unsurprising blog post from a .NET guy about how static-typing is all that's needed to save front-end web development. Sadly, almost every problem

A completely unsurprising blog post from a .NET guy about how static-typing is all that's needed to save front-end web development. Sadly, almost every problem he's listed as a frustration when working with javascript is almost exclusive to .NET because of how bad the web tooling is. None of those are problems in Rails or even Node. Why, in this day and age is .NET still such an isolated and insulated community? Edit Ok I really can't help myself so here it is point by point: > I don't like any scripting or dynamic languages. I like code that compiles for lots of obvious reasons. I guess they are not obvious to me. I would really prefer it if you could actually state your arguments as I'm not generally persuaded by a lot of hand waving. > Ever try to use different JavaScript tools with conflicting jQuery versions? Yeah, that sucks. What? No, I can't actually say this has ever been a problem. Nor should it be. > How about trying to figure out how to make 20 javascript include files load quicker as one request? Yeah that sucks too. This is pretty easily solved in just about every modern development stack outside of .NET. Perhaps it's just Visual Studio that sucks? To be honest even in .NET this isn't hard to do, but .NET developers do seem allergic to anything that involves the command line. > Performance? Let me just point to the old Facebook mobile app made with JS & HTML5. It sucked. Enough said Is this enough though? It just sounds like an anecdote to me. A single data point. Linked in's app is great as another example. Even so, no should expect that HTML5/JS was for everything or the ultimate in front-end performance. Typescript will do absolutely nothing to improve this. It isn't simply a language problem it is the curse of code hosted in a browser intended to be completely cross-platform compatible. > How about unit testing JavaScript? I've never tried it... Then I can't really see why you would be an expert on how javascript sucks in this regard (or any really). Have you tried unit testing the front-end of a WPF or Silverlight app? I can tell you from direct experience it truly sucks. This is entirely a tooling and experience based problem. I've done web development in .NET too, for years. It sucked, so I stopped doing it that way and moved to Rails finally. Despite this, I still didn't have the same level of issues that the author experienced. It is possible to do front-end web development in .NET with a minimum of pain it just isn't the norm, and arguably it still isn't very convenient. Especially with a community that largely waits around for Microsoft to anoint and every technology and bless it with Visual Studio integration before using it. I hate javascript too. I just think I have better reasons and personally find Coffeescript more than sufficient to ease my pain.

michielvoo 14y ago
Just for the record, in ASP.NET you can use many tools to combine (and minify) scripts and stylesheets [1][2]. Generally, these do not require the use of a command line. To be fair, the majority of .NET developers depend on the tooling provided by Microsoft, which consists mainly of Visual Studio. The tools from Microsoft go a long way to isolate developers from using the command line, although the recent addition of NuGet to the toolset has also introduced the Package Manager Console [3] inside of Visual Studio. [1] http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Web.Optimization http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Web.Optimization [2] http://www.nuget.org/packages/Cassette.Web http://www.nuget.org/packages/Cassette.Web [3] http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/using-the-package-manager-console http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/using-the-package-mana...
- lucisferre 14y ago
  Yup I know. That's what made this blog post somewhat frustrating. The author clearly has no depth with javascript or front-end web development. However perhaps I was a bit harsh. While these are not particular valid or well reasoned points about javascript, they are still a common first impression javascript leaves on many developers. Perhaps it still does speak to deeper problems with javascript as a language.

michielvoo 14y ago

Just for the record, in ASP.NET you can use many tools to combine (and minify) scripts and stylesheets [1][2]. Generally, these do not require the use of a command line. To be fair, the majority of .NET developers depend on the tooling provided by Microsoft, which consists mainly of Visual Studio. The tools from Microsoft go a long way to isolate developers from using the command line, although the recent addition of NuGet to the toolset has also introduced the Package Manager Console [3] inside of Visual Studio. [1] http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Web.Optimization http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Web.Optimization [2] http://www.nuget.org/packages/Cassette.Web http://www.nuget.org/packages/Cassette.Web [3] http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/using-the-package-manager-console http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/using-the-package-mana...

lucisferre 14y ago
Yup I know. That's what made this blog post somewhat frustrating. The author clearly has no depth with javascript or front-end web development. However perhaps I was a bit harsh. While these are not particular valid or well reasoned points about javascript, they are still a common first impression javascript leaves on many developers. Perhaps it still does speak to deeper problems with javascript as a language.