6 ms·

I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. On a serious note, JavaScript and the lack of fragmentation is one of t

by Ygg2 13y ago

I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. On a serious note, JavaScript and the lack of fragmentation is one of the best features of Web. You don't have to download appropriate browsers (in theory and mostly in practice) to run your website.

taeric 13y ago
This is one of the things that baffles me with the somewhat radical things getting added to javascript this go around. I mean, I can't argue that there are some things that will be nice to have. However, it seems that going with additions that are not addable as a library is contrary to the bloody web. Or, am I wrong and the new syntactical changes will be ok? Also... this pretty much exemplifies how/why lisp would have been awesome. Quite literally everything could be done "as a library."
lisper 13y ago
> I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. There would be very little difference in the UX between different scripting languages and the current UX w.r.t. media codexes, and the end result would be the same in both cases: there would be some repertoire of languages and codexes that everyone uses and become standard. The alternative is to forever have to deal with a language that by design cannot even handle integer math or unicode strings properly.
- randallsquared 13y ago
  > But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. That's exactly the point. Imagine dozens of them.
  - lisper 13y ago
    Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. Dozens of languages? I very much doubt that will happen. Just as we only have a small handful of codexes that actually matter (Flash, Silverlight, H264, maybe ogg) I predict that we will end up with a small number of languages that actually matter: Javascript, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. Maybe CL. IMHO that would be a better world than the one we currently live in. Javascript is serviceable for its original purpose, but for serious webapps it's broken beyond redemption. NOTE: This is not to say that it is impossible to write serious webapps in Javasceript. Obviously it is possible. What I mean is that at some point the aggregate cost of dealing with Javascript's design flaws becomes greater than the aggregate cost of dealing with multiple browser scripting languages.
    - reissbaker 13y ago
      > Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. That's quite a stretch. There are two browser plugins that are in broad use on the web: Flash, for fallback audio/video support and some casual games, and Silverlight, for Netflix. Both are dead technologies when you consider mobile web; even if you're only thinking about laptops/desktops, both Silverlight and Flash have essentially been abandoned by their creators, and the web platform has almost entirely subsumed their original purpose for existing, currently with the exception of DRM. Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target, and languages can just target that — giving the web a broader selection of languages without the fragmented nightmare (and security nightmare) of introducing dozens of new plugins. This is something that browser vendors are currently working on: Google with PNACL, and Mozilla (and, to some extent, Google as well) with asm.js. I hope we end up with PNACL, but a sufficiently optimized asm.js would serve the same purpose, albeit with a more difficult debugging / performance optimization story.
      - lisper 13y ago
        > Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target That is a terrific idea in theory, but the last time anyone tried to do that the result was the JVM.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. For one, if you find it bad, then why would you want to add to this badness with extra web languages? If anything, what you say is a counter-example. Second, what you describe has stopped happening to 90% of web users for like 5 years or so. Nobody caresa bout Java or Silverlight, and Flash is getting all the more obscure. Heck, major browsers like Safari don't ship it algother, and even YouTube plays without it. At worse, you lose some shitty casual games. >The alternative is to forever have to deal with a language that by design cannot even handle integer math or unicode strings properly. Well, we seem to be doing ok even with such a language. Besides, most languages cannot handle unicode strings properly anyway (including Java, Go, PHP, Python, Ruby and several others). There are just too many subtleties.
  - lisper 13y ago
    > if you find it bad I don't. (Presuming that by "it" you mean "having a lot of plugins floating around".) > Nobody caresa bout Java or Silverlight Netflix uses Silverlight. There are an awful lot of nobodies using Netflix. > we seem to be doing ok even with such a language That depends on what you consider "OK". Blub users always think that things are OK. > most languages cannot handle unicode strings properly The problem with JS is that the standard requires strings to be represented internally as UTF-16, which cannot cover the entire unicode code point space. So JS's brokenness is worse than other languages because it is actually enshrined in its standard.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >That depends on what you consider "OK". What I consider OK is that we have had great growth in the breadth, scope and capabilities of the modern web. I've been on it professionally since 1996, and followed it even before, and I don't think there's anyone who would disagree with such a statement. From a joke environment based on plain text circa 1993-4, we know have the ability to emulate whole CPUs inside a Javascript VM, AND with usable speed. And then there's ES6 with a whole lot of additions to the language. >Netflix uses Silverlight. There are an awful lot of nobodies using Netflix. Well, in the US. The world is 20 times bigger than the US. I'm not even sure why US users put up with Netflix pulling this shit. >Blub users always think that things are OK. Well, other's have it worse. They always think that the "blub" concept, a random idea in an essay, is something that's true, universal and settled, were it's just someones opinion. The blub idea, furthermore, is about the "expression problem", and it's condescending to people by assuming that that's all that matters. People chose to write something in C, C++, Assembly, Lisp, Haskell whatever for lots of reasons, and the success of that undertaking involves a lot more reason than "expression". Things like community, libraries, toolsets, hireability, existing codebase, documentation, speed, heck, even familiarity, play a role as much, or even more, important than the mere "expression" capability of the language. And, statistically speaking, the oh-so-expression language people don't have much to show for it, whereas the blub C/C++ people have tens of thousands of indispensable programs used by billions. Sure, they are much less, but at one point they were much more (Lisp existed before C/C++), and they also had nice funding going on until the mid-eighties, with not much to show for it. 3-4 C people in AT&T laid the foundation for most of what we use today. Were are the equivalent non-blub people, who had an impact in fields other than PL design?

by Ygg2 13y ago

taeric 13y ago

This is one of the things that baffles me with the somewhat radical things getting added to javascript this go around. I mean, I can't argue that there are some things that will be nice to have. However, it seems that going with additions that are not addable as a library is contrary to the bloody web. Or, am I wrong and the new syntactical changes will be ok? Also... this pretty much exemplifies how/why lisp would have been awesome. Quite literally everything could be done "as a library."

lisper 13y ago

> I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. There would be very little difference in the UX between different scripting languages and the current UX w.r.t. media codexes, and the end result would be the same in both cases: there would be some repertoire of languages and codexes that everyone uses and become standard. The alternative is to forever have to deal with a language that by design cannot even handle integer math or unicode strings properly.

randallsquared 13y ago
> But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. That's exactly the point. Imagine dozens of them.
- lisper 13y ago
  Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. Dozens of languages? I very much doubt that will happen. Just as we only have a small handful of codexes that actually matter (Flash, Silverlight, H264, maybe ogg) I predict that we will end up with a small number of languages that actually matter: Javascript, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. Maybe CL. IMHO that would be a better world than the one we currently live in. Javascript is serviceable for its original purpose, but for serious webapps it's broken beyond redemption. NOTE: This is not to say that it is impossible to write serious webapps in Javasceript. Obviously it is possible. What I mean is that at some point the aggregate cost of dealing with Javascript's design flaws becomes greater than the aggregate cost of dealing with multiple browser scripting languages.
  - reissbaker 13y ago
    > Dozens of what? Browser plugins? I don't have to imagine, that's the world we live in. That's quite a stretch. There are two browser plugins that are in broad use on the web: Flash, for fallback audio/video support and some casual games, and Silverlight, for Netflix. Both are dead technologies when you consider mobile web; even if you're only thinking about laptops/desktops, both Silverlight and Flash have essentially been abandoned by their creators, and the web platform has almost entirely subsumed their original purpose for existing, currently with the exception of DRM. Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target, and languages can just target that — giving the web a broader selection of languages without the fragmented nightmare (and security nightmare) of introducing dozens of new plugins. This is something that browser vendors are currently working on: Google with PNACL, and Mozilla (and, to some extent, Google as well) with asm.js. I hope we end up with PNACL, but a sufficiently optimized asm.js would serve the same purpose, albeit with a more difficult debugging / performance optimization story.
    - lisper 13y ago
      > Personally, what I'm hoping happens is that we get one, single better compile target That is a terrific idea in theory, but the last time anyone tried to do that the result was the JVM.
coldtea 13y ago
>But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. For one, if you find it bad, then why would you want to add to this badness with extra web languages? If anything, what you say is a counter-example. Second, what you describe has stopped happening to 90% of web users for like 5 years or so. Nobody caresa bout Java or Silverlight, and Flash is getting all the more obscure. Heck, major browsers like Safari don't ship it algother, and even YouTube plays without it. At worse, you lose some shitty casual games. >The alternative is to forever have to deal with a language that by design cannot even handle integer math or unicode strings properly. Well, we seem to be doing ok even with such a language. Besides, most languages cannot handle unicode strings properly anyway (including Java, Go, PHP, Python, Ruby and several others). There are just too many subtleties.
- lisper 13y ago
  > if you find it bad I don't. (Presuming that by "it" you mean "having a lot of plugins floating around".) > Nobody caresa bout Java or Silverlight Netflix uses Silverlight. There are an awful lot of nobodies using Netflix. > we seem to be doing ok even with such a language That depends on what you consider "OK". Blub users always think that things are OK. > most languages cannot handle unicode strings properly The problem with JS is that the standard requires strings to be represented internally as UTF-16, which cannot cover the entire unicode code point space. So JS's brokenness is worse than other languages because it is actually enshrined in its standard.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >That depends on what you consider "OK". What I consider OK is that we have had great growth in the breadth, scope and capabilities of the modern web. I've been on it professionally since 1996, and followed it even before, and I don't think there's anyone who would disagree with such a statement. From a joke environment based on plain text circa 1993-4, we know have the ability to emulate whole CPUs inside a Javascript VM, AND with usable speed. And then there's ES6 with a whole lot of additions to the language. >Netflix uses Silverlight. There are an awful lot of nobodies using Netflix. Well, in the US. The world is 20 times bigger than the US. I'm not even sure why US users put up with Netflix pulling this shit. >Blub users always think that things are OK. Well, other's have it worse. They always think that the "blub" concept, a random idea in an essay, is something that's true, universal and settled, were it's just someones opinion. The blub idea, furthermore, is about the "expression problem", and it's condescending to people by assuming that that's all that matters. People chose to write something in C, C++, Assembly, Lisp, Haskell whatever for lots of reasons, and the success of that undertaking involves a lot more reason than "expression". Things like community, libraries, toolsets, hireability, existing codebase, documentation, speed, heck, even familiarity, play a role as much, or even more, important than the mere "expression" capability of the language. And, statistically speaking, the oh-so-expression language people don't have much to show for it, whereas the blub C/C++ people have tens of thousands of indispensable programs used by billions. Sure, they are much less, but at one point they were much more (Lisp existed before C/C++), and they also had nice funding going on until the mid-eighties, with not much to show for it. 3-4 C people in AT&T laid the foundation for most of what we use today. Were are the equivalent non-blub people, who had an impact in fields other than PL design?