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> Javascript is a bad choice Javascript is great once used in a "good" way. It's flexible & it's almost everywhere. Spending all your time complaining about ho

> Javascript is a bad choice Javascript is great once used in a "good" way. It's flexible & it's almost everywhere. Spending all your time complaining about how "bad" Javascript is kindof pointless. If you use Javascript, learn how to use it well. Master sushi chefs don't sit there complaining how bad knives are because the knives need to be constantly sharpened. If you are cooking spaghetti, learn how to strain the noodles, instead of using silly examples assuming people are incompetent at learning a tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbA9KAc5gZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbA9KAc5gZs

rplnt 13y ago
The fact that something is "almost everywhere" doesn't make it good. It makes it useful at most. And your examples make sense, javascript doesn't (in some cases) so it's very appropriate to complain.
- briantakita 13y ago
  > so it's very appropriate to complain In that case, it's appropriate to complain about gravity & being restricted to the speed of light? No, it's better to learn about and use these properties to your advantage.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    Are you seriously equating the laws of physics and human artefacts? That would be ludicrous. While the laws of physics are set in stone, human artefacts can be remade. That changes everything I'm sure you have the skills required to, say, write a preprocessor for whatever language you are using, and add some special constructs in it. Missing feature? Done in a few days. So… If the laws of physics suck, suck it up. If your tools suck, change them.
    - briantakita 13y ago
      > Are you seriously equating the laws of physics and human artefacts? Yes I am. The property that they share is they will not be changed or avoided in the near future. Another property is that despite certain limitations, you can still accomplish many things. If you focus on these limitations, you will accomplish less. > If the laws of physics suck, suck it up. Not in all cases. Physics is just a model of our understanding of physical existence. Einstein demonstrated that. > If your tools suck, change them. I guess if it's worth it to spend that much effort, then go ahead. Just know that the frequent examples of javascript's "problems" are easily surmountable, that is if you don't dwell on these "problems". Javascript has some great attributes to it. Indeed, it does not "suck". That's like saying the human body sucks because we have this ridiculous tail bone and wisdom teeth. No accounting for taste, I suppose. I choose to focus on that and progress in mastery of my craft. If you want to complain and/or change your tools, go ahead. I don't judge you.
      - loup-vaillant 13y ago
        > Yes I am. The property that they share is they will not be changed or avoided in the near future. You vastly overestimate the effort it takes to change your tools. When I was talking of a few days to add a feature to a language, that was a conservative estimate. With proper knowledge it's more like hours. And I'm not even assuming access to the implementation of the language. Source-to-source transformations are generally more than enough. Heck, I have done it to Haskell and Lua. And it wasn't a simple language feature, it was Parsing Expression Grammars (the full business). I used no special tools. I just bootstrapped from MetaII (I wrote the first version by hand, then wrote about 30 compilers to the nearly final version). (For Haskell, I took a more direct route by using the Parsec library.) Granted, writing a full compiler to asm.js is a fairly large undertaking. But fixing bits and pieces of the language is easy. Real easy. > Not in all cases. Physics is just a model of our understanding of physical existence. Oh, come on, don't play dumb. You know I was talking about the way the universe really works, not the way we think it works. > I choose to focus on that and progress in mastery of my craft. If you want to complain and/or change your tools, go ahead. I don't judge you. I'm not sure what you're saying. It sounds like you want to focus on particular programming languages. This would be a mistake, pure and simple. You want to master the underlying principles of programming languages. It can let you pick up the next big thing in a few days. It can let you perceive design flaws (such as dynamic scoping). It can let you manipulate your tools, instead of just using them. Your way leads to obsolescence. --- My advice to you: if you haven't already, go learn a language from a paradigm you don't know. I suggest Haskell. Also write an interpreter for a toy language. Trust me, that's time well spent. For instance, knowing Ocaml made me a better C++ programmer.
MichaelGG 13y ago
With this logic you can defend anything. PHP's great if used in a good way: Zuckerman's a billionaire. Right? Why is anyone even bothering with PL these days? Sushi knives don't decide to cut you because the rice came from a different origin. And I'd guess that most craftsmen, outside of a ritual and tradition would love for their tools to have less disadvantages. If you want to draw an analogy to spaghetti (?), it'd be like complaining that the only kind of spaghetti you can buy locally cooks only at a specific temperature, and even a bit more turns it to mush. And the reason is because the local government passed a bylaw with only a few hours of consultation that ended up banning imports of better kinds of spaghetti. While it might be "pointless" to spend all your time complaining, there's certainly value in asking "wat" and pointing out absurdity.
- nothiggs 13y ago
  The following perfectly describes my sentiments about all the complaints people have about JavaScript, PHP, <name your favourite hated language> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E
  - lomnakkus 13y ago
    So we should just give up completely on trying to make better things? I don't think that was the point of the video (some amount of gratitude for the things we have) -- but then maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.
    - nothiggs 13y ago
      On the contrary. We should strive to correct all the "wats" that obviously exist in all these languages, but most of what I see is just complaints, most of them ignoring the amazing things that can be done with these technologies. Over 30 year I've been programming in more languages than I care to count, and I don't remember at any point having a specific language stop me from achieving my goal because it has some traps or design flaws. Always made sure to know about them and make use of the language's strong points instead of concentrating on the weak. And we both understood the point of the video. The fact that there is much to be grateful for does not mean that we shouldn't improve on what needs improving. But for heaven's sake, if you're not going to improve on it, stop whining about it and be grateful for the amazing things it does enable.

rplnt 13y ago

The fact that something is "almost everywhere" doesn't make it good. It makes it useful at most. And your examples make sense, javascript doesn't (in some cases) so it's very appropriate to complain.

briantakita 13y ago
> so it's very appropriate to complain In that case, it's appropriate to complain about gravity & being restricted to the speed of light? No, it's better to learn about and use these properties to your advantage.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  Are you seriously equating the laws of physics and human artefacts? That would be ludicrous. While the laws of physics are set in stone, human artefacts can be remade. That changes everything I'm sure you have the skills required to, say, write a preprocessor for whatever language you are using, and add some special constructs in it. Missing feature? Done in a few days. So… If the laws of physics suck, suck it up. If your tools suck, change them.
  - briantakita 13y ago
    > Are you seriously equating the laws of physics and human artefacts? Yes I am. The property that they share is they will not be changed or avoided in the near future. Another property is that despite certain limitations, you can still accomplish many things. If you focus on these limitations, you will accomplish less. > If the laws of physics suck, suck it up. Not in all cases. Physics is just a model of our understanding of physical existence. Einstein demonstrated that. > If your tools suck, change them. I guess if it's worth it to spend that much effort, then go ahead. Just know that the frequent examples of javascript's "problems" are easily surmountable, that is if you don't dwell on these "problems". Javascript has some great attributes to it. Indeed, it does not "suck". That's like saying the human body sucks because we have this ridiculous tail bone and wisdom teeth. No accounting for taste, I suppose. I choose to focus on that and progress in mastery of my craft. If you want to complain and/or change your tools, go ahead. I don't judge you.
    - loup-vaillant 13y ago
      > Yes I am. The property that they share is they will not be changed or avoided in the near future. You vastly overestimate the effort it takes to change your tools. When I was talking of a few days to add a feature to a language, that was a conservative estimate. With proper knowledge it's more like hours. And I'm not even assuming access to the implementation of the language. Source-to-source transformations are generally more than enough. Heck, I have done it to Haskell and Lua. And it wasn't a simple language feature, it was Parsing Expression Grammars (the full business). I used no special tools. I just bootstrapped from MetaII (I wrote the first version by hand, then wrote about 30 compilers to the nearly final version). (For Haskell, I took a more direct route by using the Parsec library.) Granted, writing a full compiler to asm.js is a fairly large undertaking. But fixing bits and pieces of the language is easy. Real easy. > Not in all cases. Physics is just a model of our understanding of physical existence. Oh, come on, don't play dumb. You know I was talking about the way the universe really works, not the way we think it works. > I choose to focus on that and progress in mastery of my craft. If you want to complain and/or change your tools, go ahead. I don't judge you. I'm not sure what you're saying. It sounds like you want to focus on particular programming languages. This would be a mistake, pure and simple. You want to master the underlying principles of programming languages. It can let you pick up the next big thing in a few days. It can let you perceive design flaws (such as dynamic scoping). It can let you manipulate your tools, instead of just using them. Your way leads to obsolescence. --- My advice to you: if you haven't already, go learn a language from a paradigm you don't know. I suggest Haskell. Also write an interpreter for a toy language. Trust me, that's time well spent. For instance, knowing Ocaml made me a better C++ programmer.

MichaelGG 13y ago

With this logic you can defend anything. PHP's great if used in a good way: Zuckerman's a billionaire. Right? Why is anyone even bothering with PL these days? Sushi knives don't decide to cut you because the rice came from a different origin. And I'd guess that most craftsmen, outside of a ritual and tradition would love for their tools to have less disadvantages. If you want to draw an analogy to spaghetti (?), it'd be like complaining that the only kind of spaghetti you can buy locally cooks only at a specific temperature, and even a bit more turns it to mush. And the reason is because the local government passed a bylaw with only a few hours of consultation that ended up banning imports of better kinds of spaghetti. While it might be "pointless" to spend all your time complaining, there's certainly value in asking "wat" and pointing out absurdity.

nothiggs 13y ago
The following perfectly describes my sentiments about all the complaints people have about JavaScript, PHP, <name your favourite hated language> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E
- lomnakkus 13y ago
  So we should just give up completely on trying to make better things? I don't think that was the point of the video (some amount of gratitude for the things we have) -- but then maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.
  - nothiggs 13y ago
    On the contrary. We should strive to correct all the "wats" that obviously exist in all these languages, but most of what I see is just complaints, most of them ignoring the amazing things that can be done with these technologies. Over 30 year I've been programming in more languages than I care to count, and I don't remember at any point having a specific language stop me from achieving my goal because it has some traps or design flaws. Always made sure to know about them and make use of the language's strong points instead of concentrating on the weak. And we both understood the point of the video. The fact that there is much to be grateful for does not mean that we shouldn't improve on what needs improving. But for heaven's sake, if you're not going to improve on it, stop whining about it and be grateful for the amazing things it does enable.