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Oh Javascript. This has been said so many times before, but why, oh why, has the world converged on this particular language? Why aren't there saner alternativ

Oh Javascript. This has been said so many times before, but why, oh why, has the world converged on this particular language? Why aren't there saner alternatives to Javascript in browsers? We have so many languages at our disposal, why choose Javascript? Why don't people realize that web programming is not great because of Javascript but despite Javascript? We are bound to Javascript on the web because browsers, for whatever reason, don't support anything else. But we don't have to make matters worse by dragging this weirdo language unto the rest of the programming world. But who am I kidding, AppleScript may be one of the few languages actually worse than Javascript.

yoklov 12y ago
JavaScript isn't that bad. It certainly has it's faults but there are much worse languages that could have become ubiquitous than JavaScript. Honestly, I find web programming to be generally terrible. JavaScript is actually one of the better parts of it. Most of the time I work in C++ these days though.
- Derbasti 12y ago
  You already know all the good stuff about weak typing and equality. But let me give you a few recent examples I stumbled over: - Javascript can not format numbers with leading zeros. - Handling binary data is increadibly painful. - Object oriented programming is really convoluted. - Lack of classes and modules makes code structuring hard. True, it could be worse. But Lua, Ruby, Python, Perl, Scheme, Clojure, and many others are much better languages with very similar feature sets. And then there's a whole host of languages with different features. I just don't see why you would Javascript in an environment where all these other alternatives are available.
facepalm 12y ago
Why don't people like you recognize the greatness of JavaScript? Which language would be preferable? Perhaps Lua? Not much else with comparable simplicity comes to mind.
- pirateking 12y ago
  Scheme.
- poweribo 12y ago
  good thing these other nicer languages compiles to javascript: typescript, kotlin, clojurescript

yoklov 12y ago

JavaScript isn't that bad. It certainly has it's faults but there are much worse languages that could have become ubiquitous than JavaScript. Honestly, I find web programming to be generally terrible. JavaScript is actually one of the better parts of it. Most of the time I work in C++ these days though.

Derbasti 12y ago
You already know all the good stuff about weak typing and equality. But let me give you a few recent examples I stumbled over: - Javascript can not format numbers with leading zeros. - Handling binary data is increadibly painful. - Object oriented programming is really convoluted. - Lack of classes and modules makes code structuring hard. True, it could be worse. But Lua, Ruby, Python, Perl, Scheme, Clojure, and many others are much better languages with very similar feature sets. And then there's a whole host of languages with different features. I just don't see why you would Javascript in an environment where all these other alternatives are available.

facepalm 12y ago

Why don't people like you recognize the greatness of JavaScript? Which language would be preferable? Perhaps Lua? Not much else with comparable simplicity comes to mind.

pirateking 12y ago
Scheme.
poweribo 12y ago
good thing these other nicer languages compiles to javascript: typescript, kotlin, clojurescript