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I think criticizing JavaScript has become a way of signaling "I'm a good programmer." Yes, good programmers ten years ago had valid reasons to criticize it. But

I think criticizing JavaScript has become a way of signaling "I'm a good programmer." Yes, good programmers ten years ago had valid reasons to criticize it. But today, attacking the efforts of skilled engineers who have improved the language (given the constraints and without breaking half of the web) seems unfair. They’ve achieved a Herculean task compared to the Python dev team, which has broken backward compatibility so many times yet failed to create a consistent language, lacking a single right way to do many things.

hnlmorg 9mo ago
> But today, attacking the efforts of skilled engineers who have improved the language (given the constraints and without breaking half of the web) seems unfair. I was criticising a thing not a person. Also your comment implies it was ok to be critical of a language 10 years ago but not ok today because a few more language designers might get offended. Which is a weird argument to make.
- TheTaytay 9mo ago
  I think he’s saying it’s a fundamentally improved language at this point?
  - ezst 9mo ago
    Not OP, but the case can be made that it's still the same very ugly language of 10 years ago, with few layers of sugar coating on top. The ugly hasn't gone anywhere. You still have to deal with it and suffer the cognitive burden.
    - locknitpicker 9mo ago
      > Not OP, but the case can be made that it's still the same very ugly language of 10 years ago, with few layers of sugar coating on top. Let's talk specifics. As it seems you have strong opinions, in your opinion what is the single worst aspect of JavaScript that justifies the use of the word "ugly"?
      - ezst 9mo ago
        https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/qdmzio/dif https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/qdmzio/dif... or anything that touches array ops (concatenating, map, etc…). I mean, better and more knowledgeable people than me have written thousands of articles about those footguns and many more. I am not a webdev, I don't want to remember those things, but more often than I would wish, I have to interop with JS, and then I'd rather use a better behaved language that compiles down to JS (there are many very good ones, nowadays) than deal with JS directly, and pray for the best.
        locknitpicker 9mo ago
        If type conversion and the new var declaration keywords are your top complains about a language, I'm sorry to say that you are at best grasping at straws to find some semblance of justification for you irrational dislike. > I am not a webdev, I don't want to remember those things, (...) Not only is JavaScript way more than a webdev thing, you are ignoring the fact that most of the mainstream programming languages also support things like automatic type conversion.
        ezst 9mo ago
        > you are at best grasping at straws to find some semblance of justification for you irrational dislike. You seem so emotionally-involved that the whole point whooshed above your head. JS is a language that gives me no joy to use (there are many of those, I can put Fortran or SQL in there), and, remarkably, gives me no confidence that whatever I write with it does what I intend (down to basic branching with checking for nulliness/undefinedness, checking for edge-cases, etc). In that sense it's much worse than most of those languages that I just dislike. > Not only is JavaScript way more than a webdev thing, you are ignoring the fact that most of the mainstream programming languages also support things like automatic type conversion. Again, you are missing the point. JS simply has no alternative for webdev, but it's easy to argue that, for everything else, there are better, faster, more expressive, more robust, … languages out there. The only time I ever have to touch JS is consequently for webdev.
dev_l1x_be 9mo ago
Or good programmers understand why JS is bad?

hnlmorg 9mo ago

> But today, attacking the efforts of skilled engineers who have improved the language (given the constraints and without breaking half of the web) seems unfair. I was criticising a thing not a person. Also your comment implies it was ok to be critical of a language 10 years ago but not ok today because a few more language designers might get offended. Which is a weird argument to make.

TheTaytay 9mo ago
I think he’s saying it’s a fundamentally improved language at this point?
- ezst 9mo ago
  Not OP, but the case can be made that it's still the same very ugly language of 10 years ago, with few layers of sugar coating on top. The ugly hasn't gone anywhere. You still have to deal with it and suffer the cognitive burden.
  - locknitpicker 9mo ago
    > Not OP, but the case can be made that it's still the same very ugly language of 10 years ago, with few layers of sugar coating on top. Let's talk specifics. As it seems you have strong opinions, in your opinion what is the single worst aspect of JavaScript that justifies the use of the word "ugly"?
    - ezst 9mo ago
      https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/qdmzio/dif https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/qdmzio/dif... or anything that touches array ops (concatenating, map, etc…). I mean, better and more knowledgeable people than me have written thousands of articles about those footguns and many more. I am not a webdev, I don't want to remember those things, but more often than I would wish, I have to interop with JS, and then I'd rather use a better behaved language that compiles down to JS (there are many very good ones, nowadays) than deal with JS directly, and pray for the best.
      - locknitpicker 9mo ago
        If type conversion and the new var declaration keywords are your top complains about a language, I'm sorry to say that you are at best grasping at straws to find some semblance of justification for you irrational dislike. > I am not a webdev, I don't want to remember those things, (...) Not only is JavaScript way more than a webdev thing, you are ignoring the fact that most of the mainstream programming languages also support things like automatic type conversion.
        ezst 9mo ago
        > you are at best grasping at straws to find some semblance of justification for you irrational dislike. You seem so emotionally-involved that the whole point whooshed above your head. JS is a language that gives me no joy to use (there are many of those, I can put Fortran or SQL in there), and, remarkably, gives me no confidence that whatever I write with it does what I intend (down to basic branching with checking for nulliness/undefinedness, checking for edge-cases, etc). In that sense it's much worse than most of those languages that I just dislike. > Not only is JavaScript way more than a webdev thing, you are ignoring the fact that most of the mainstream programming languages also support things like automatic type conversion. Again, you are missing the point. JS simply has no alternative for webdev, but it's easy to argue that, for everything else, there are better, faster, more expressive, more robust, … languages out there. The only time I ever have to touch JS is consequently for webdev.

dev_l1x_be 9mo ago

Or good programmers understand why JS is bad?