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If you Hate JavaScript it’s Due to Ignorance

2 points by WhitneyLand 13y ago

daleharvey 13y ago
JavaScript still sucks, some of us came from actual functional languages. The post (and title) seems mostly like link bait, but just in case the author is reading, some of us are perfectly capable of hating a language while appreciating its pragmatism at the same time, JavaScript is close to the only language I code and I very much hate it.
georgemcbay 13y ago
If you post uninformed blogs with trollish titles, is that also due to ignorance? I was well versed in the concepts of functional languages long before I was ever exposed to JavaScript, and while I prefer more pragmatic languages that allow functional concepts (like Go) as opposed to pure functional languages, I make use of functional concepts all the time. Guess what? JavaScript still sucks. The scoping is still ridiculous (yeah, I know, the fix for that is just around the corner, just like it has been since ECMAScript 4 got shelved how many years ago)? The lack of true parallelism results in hacky solutions like webworkers, callback hell, etc, etc. FWIW, JavaScript is hardly the only language I "hate", but my hate for it burns so much stronger based on the fact that the political efforts of the Mozilla group have essentially destroyed any chance of a true competitor that didn't have to live with JavaScript's warts underneath it being used as widely-deployed web client language. So I'm sometimes forced to use it despite how much I hate it, unlike most languages where I can easily use alternatives that I don't hate. My hate for JavaScript is very pragmatic!
marssaxman 13y ago
Or it's because you are familiar with enough other languages to understand how much better Javascript could have been, and you find frustration in the multitude of ways its sloppy design makes life unnecessarily difficult for its users. The reasons I think Javascript sucks have nothing to do with browser compatibility problems or libraries like Jquery; they are fundamental mistakes in the language design, like "this"-binding and implicit value conversion. The argument that people hate Javascript because it is a functional language sounds very strange to this particular fan of functional languages. Does he really think Javascript is a "functional language" just because it has closures? "you can’t underestimate the power of ubiquity" - well, yes. That is what Javascript has going for it, and that is about all that Javascript has going for it. Fortunately for Javascript fans, it's enough to guarantee that we're going to be dealing with the language for decades to come.

2 points by WhitneyLand 13y ago

JavaScript still sucks, some of us came from actual functional languages. The post (and title) seems mostly like link bait, but just in case the author is reading, some of us are perfectly capable of hating a language while appreciating its pragmatism at the same time, JavaScript is close to the only language I code and I very much hate it.

georgemcbay 13y ago

If you post uninformed blogs with trollish titles, is that also due to ignorance? I was well versed in the concepts of functional languages long before I was ever exposed to JavaScript, and while I prefer more pragmatic languages that allow functional concepts (like Go) as opposed to pure functional languages, I make use of functional concepts all the time. Guess what? JavaScript still sucks. The scoping is still ridiculous (yeah, I know, the fix for that is just around the corner, just like it has been since ECMAScript 4 got shelved how many years ago)? The lack of true parallelism results in hacky solutions like webworkers, callback hell, etc, etc. FWIW, JavaScript is hardly the only language I "hate", but my hate for it burns so much stronger based on the fact that the political efforts of the Mozilla group have essentially destroyed any chance of a true competitor that didn't have to live with JavaScript's warts underneath it being used as widely-deployed web client language. So I'm sometimes forced to use it despite how much I hate it, unlike most languages where I can easily use alternatives that I don't hate. My hate for JavaScript is very pragmatic!

marssaxman 13y ago

Or it's because you are familiar with enough other languages to understand how much better Javascript could have been, and you find frustration in the multitude of ways its sloppy design makes life unnecessarily difficult for its users. The reasons I think Javascript sucks have nothing to do with browser compatibility problems or libraries like Jquery; they are fundamental mistakes in the language design, like "this"-binding and implicit value conversion. The argument that people hate Javascript because it is a functional language sounds very strange to this particular fan of functional languages. Does he really think Javascript is a "functional language" just because it has closures? "you can’t underestimate the power of ubiquity" - well, yes. That is what Javascript has going for it, and that is about all that Javascript has going for it. Fortunately for Javascript fans, it's enough to guarantee that we're going to be dealing with the language for decades to come.