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There's a whole world of problems to fix before you even get to the problem of Javascript. Right now, the world only has 3.5 base browser engines. Those brows

There's a whole world of problems to fix before you even get to the problem of Javascript. Right now, the world only has 3.5 base browser engines. Those browser developers have no interest in adding a new standard language like Python, even though more people prefer that to Javascript. So, if you were to develop a new browser language, you need to build a new browser from scratch, and then move a billion people to it.

cmdrfred 11y ago
Man, python on the server and in the browser. What a world that would be.
- Ygg2 11y ago
  Filled with version problems :P Oh, you got Python 6, well we have Python 8 which breaks your code in subtle ways.
- coderzach 11y ago
  2.7 or 3?
  - wldcordeiro 11y ago
    3.4+ would be preferable.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    Why not both? Though the difference between the two is over hyped in my opinion. Most of the time its rather easy to go back and forth.
- wwweston 11y ago
  > Man, python on the server and in the browser. What a world that would be. If you're going to imagine that as a utopian alternative to JS, be sure to be thorough about it and imagine 1995 Python dominating the browser landscape for years and then the advancement path the language has taken on the server playing out among several browsers. Then come back and tell everybody how much prettier it looks than JS (for bonus points, how much prettier than ES6). While we're at it, as a general rant... I think it's weird that Python keeps coming up in these conversations. It's a nice language, it really is. But it's in the same paradigm set and productivity class with JavaScript, Ruby, and Perl (and to a lesser extent, even PHP). The differences between these languages aren't that big and they're largely aesthetic. If you prefer it, that's fine. If you find its particular set of choices aggregate some nice marginal gains to some additional productivity over the other languages I've listed in this class, I might even think that's a credible argument. But if you can't get past the sting from JS's warts and learn to be largely as effective in it as you are in Python -- or if you think the real solution moving forward is to turn the entire fleet of supertankers involved in the web for retooling to use a language that's not that different -- I think that you're not thinking about your tools particularly keenly or carefully.
  - lee 11y ago
    > The differences between these languages aren't that big and they're largely aesthetic. They are pretty big. At work I work on a Django-backed project that has a very fat JavaScript front-end client, and JavaScript is incredibly painful to work with compared to Python. It's not merely aesthetics, but JavaScript in the browser is severely lacking in language features that allow it to scale to larger code-bases.
    - BrendanEich 11y ago
      Use ES6 via http://babeljs.io/ http://babeljs.io/ already, and be happy :-P.
      - girvo 11y ago
        Definitely! Though, unit-testing becomes interesting, as `rewire`, `proxyquire` and other ways of changing the dependencies inside your modules when they are `import`-ed breaks. However, it turns out having an AST of your Javascript code is really useful, and lets you do things like this: https://github.com/speedskater/babel-plugin-rewire https://github.com/speedskater/babel-plugin-rewire
    - megaman821 11y ago
      I use Django a lot too, but JavaScript (ES6 specifically) just isn't a big mental shift anymore. I prefer Python syntax, but Python, Ruby, and JavaScript are pretty comparable at this point. Also JavaScript has a pretty good variety of languages that compile to it. If you like C#/Scala/Swift use TypeScript. If you like Java use Dart. If you like Lisp ClojureScript.
      - tosh 11y ago
        If you come from Python or Ruby you'll probably have an easier time with Dart than with JavaScript. Dart comes with a batteries included standard library inspired by Smalltalk (https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and-running/ch03.html https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and-running/ch03.html). Dart should also feel familiar to people coming from C#. async/await support in Dart was designed by Erik Meijer (who worked on the feature for C#) and iirc he believes it is the Dart implementation is the cleanest implementation yet. I don't see much similarity between Dart and Java.
- shurcooL 11y ago
  In all my personal projects, I write Go on server and Go in the frontend. It is a very nice, although less populated world.
- hoprocker 11y ago
  Ta.....da? http://pyjs.org/ http://pyjs.org/
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    I'll have to look at this.

cmdrfred 11y ago

Man, python on the server and in the browser. What a world that would be.

Ygg2 11y ago
Filled with version problems :P Oh, you got Python 6, well we have Python 8 which breaks your code in subtle ways.
coderzach 11y ago
2.7 or 3?
- wldcordeiro 11y ago
  3.4+ would be preferable.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Why not both? Though the difference between the two is over hyped in my opinion. Most of the time its rather easy to go back and forth.
wwweston 11y ago
> Man, python on the server and in the browser. What a world that would be. If you're going to imagine that as a utopian alternative to JS, be sure to be thorough about it and imagine 1995 Python dominating the browser landscape for years and then the advancement path the language has taken on the server playing out among several browsers. Then come back and tell everybody how much prettier it looks than JS (for bonus points, how much prettier than ES6). While we're at it, as a general rant... I think it's weird that Python keeps coming up in these conversations. It's a nice language, it really is. But it's in the same paradigm set and productivity class with JavaScript, Ruby, and Perl (and to a lesser extent, even PHP). The differences between these languages aren't that big and they're largely aesthetic. If you prefer it, that's fine. If you find its particular set of choices aggregate some nice marginal gains to some additional productivity over the other languages I've listed in this class, I might even think that's a credible argument. But if you can't get past the sting from JS's warts and learn to be largely as effective in it as you are in Python -- or if you think the real solution moving forward is to turn the entire fleet of supertankers involved in the web for retooling to use a language that's not that different -- I think that you're not thinking about your tools particularly keenly or carefully.
- lee 11y ago
  > The differences between these languages aren't that big and they're largely aesthetic. They are pretty big. At work I work on a Django-backed project that has a very fat JavaScript front-end client, and JavaScript is incredibly painful to work with compared to Python. It's not merely aesthetics, but JavaScript in the browser is severely lacking in language features that allow it to scale to larger code-bases.
  - BrendanEich 11y ago
    Use ES6 via http://babeljs.io/ http://babeljs.io/ already, and be happy :-P.
    - girvo 11y ago
      Definitely! Though, unit-testing becomes interesting, as `rewire`, `proxyquire` and other ways of changing the dependencies inside your modules when they are `import`-ed breaks. However, it turns out having an AST of your Javascript code is really useful, and lets you do things like this: https://github.com/speedskater/babel-plugin-rewire https://github.com/speedskater/babel-plugin-rewire
  - megaman821 11y ago
    I use Django a lot too, but JavaScript (ES6 specifically) just isn't a big mental shift anymore. I prefer Python syntax, but Python, Ruby, and JavaScript are pretty comparable at this point. Also JavaScript has a pretty good variety of languages that compile to it. If you like C#/Scala/Swift use TypeScript. If you like Java use Dart. If you like Lisp ClojureScript.
    - tosh 11y ago
      If you come from Python or Ruby you'll probably have an easier time with Dart than with JavaScript. Dart comes with a batteries included standard library inspired by Smalltalk (https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and-running/ch03.html https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and-running/ch03.html). Dart should also feel familiar to people coming from C#. async/await support in Dart was designed by Erik Meijer (who worked on the feature for C#) and iirc he believes it is the Dart implementation is the cleanest implementation yet. I don't see much similarity between Dart and Java.
shurcooL 11y ago
In all my personal projects, I write Go on server and Go in the frontend. It is a very nice, although less populated world.
hoprocker 11y ago
Ta.....da? http://pyjs.org/ http://pyjs.org/
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  I'll have to look at this.