3 ms·

I suppose people using JavaScript instead of C++, PHP or Java is probably an improvement. It's still sad that the improvement is so terrible.

by lucian1900 14y ago

chris_wot 14y ago
So now elitism is occurring for C++ and Java, both used for totally different reasons, in largely different domains. What's with that?
- lucian1900 14y ago
  This has nothing to do with elitism. I simply find them to be pretty poor languages that I wouldn't want to use, for different reasons.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    I'm fairly interested in your reasons, what is your language of choice?
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      I tend to use Python for most things. It's quite expressive and it's quite simple to deal with, in particularly when things go wrong. There is plenty of good criticism for C++ out there. I would never use it by choice, but it is almost the only reasonable language to use for game development at the moment. Java is less insane than C++, but it's also extremely verbose, restrictive and inexpressive. The JVM is also annoying to deal with, in particular because of startup time, memory usage and debugging. Both have stupid, useless type systems that only get in the way. There is almost no value at all in the kind of static checking either of them does. While I see the value of a good type system (like Haskell, Scala, Rust and to a small extent Go), I have yet to be comfortable enough with either to replace Python to any extent. I've done "evil" things in Python in a pinch that I'm not sure I could easily reproduce in a non-dynamic language.
      - mnarayan01 14y ago
        There is almost no value at all in the kind of static checking either of them does. OK that's just ridiculous. If nothing else (and there really is a lot else), they catch undefined variable usage and such.
        lucian1900 14y ago
        That sort of lint is easily done in Python, in fact I have it integrated in my editor. More interesting static checking is not, however, doable in either C++ or Java. Hence why I find that the current checks are not worth having a stupid and annoying type system.
skrebbel 14y ago
Note: I said PHP 5.0 for a reason. I wouldn't consider PHP 5.4 particularly worse than JavaScript. It has namespaces, a somewhat decent module system (at least compared to JS), closures, and an inconsistent standard library. With JS having virtually no standard library at all, I'm not convinced that PHP's is necessarily worse. Ecosystem-wise, I guess PHP's is a bit larger, and JS's is a bit smarter, currently. The amount of absolutely horrible JQuery plugins is already paralleling the amount of horrible Joomla extensions; I'm curious to see whether the NodeJS'ers can keep that culture from creeping into their side of the wall. All in all, pretty comparable.

I suppose people using JavaScript instead of C++, PHP or Java is probably an improvement. It's still sad that the improvement is so terrible.

chris_wot 14y ago

So now elitism is occurring for C++ and Java, both used for totally different reasons, in largely different domains. What's with that?

lucian1900 14y ago
This has nothing to do with elitism. I simply find them to be pretty poor languages that I wouldn't want to use, for different reasons.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  I'm fairly interested in your reasons, what is your language of choice?
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    I tend to use Python for most things. It's quite expressive and it's quite simple to deal with, in particularly when things go wrong. There is plenty of good criticism for C++ out there. I would never use it by choice, but it is almost the only reasonable language to use for game development at the moment. Java is less insane than C++, but it's also extremely verbose, restrictive and inexpressive. The JVM is also annoying to deal with, in particular because of startup time, memory usage and debugging. Both have stupid, useless type systems that only get in the way. There is almost no value at all in the kind of static checking either of them does. While I see the value of a good type system (like Haskell, Scala, Rust and to a small extent Go), I have yet to be comfortable enough with either to replace Python to any extent. I've done "evil" things in Python in a pinch that I'm not sure I could easily reproduce in a non-dynamic language.
    - mnarayan01 14y ago
      There is almost no value at all in the kind of static checking either of them does. OK that's just ridiculous. If nothing else (and there really is a lot else), they catch undefined variable usage and such.
      - lucian1900 14y ago
        That sort of lint is easily done in Python, in fact I have it integrated in my editor. More interesting static checking is not, however, doable in either C++ or Java. Hence why I find that the current checks are not worth having a stupid and annoying type system.

skrebbel 14y ago

Note: I said PHP 5.0 for a reason. I wouldn't consider PHP 5.4 particularly worse than JavaScript. It has namespaces, a somewhat decent module system (at least compared to JS), closures, and an inconsistent standard library. With JS having virtually no standard library at all, I'm not convinced that PHP's is necessarily worse. Ecosystem-wise, I guess PHP's is a bit larger, and JS's is a bit smarter, currently. The amount of absolutely horrible JQuery plugins is already paralleling the amount of horrible Joomla extensions; I'm curious to see whether the NodeJS'ers can keep that culture from creeping into their side of the wall. All in all, pretty comparable.