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Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times, I never understood why people would want to teach it to people without any programming

Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times, I never understood why people would want to teach it to people without any programming knowledge.

veli_joza 11y ago
I think JS is perfect choice for first language. Sure, there are many rough edges and dark corners. On the other hand, it's fun, it's safe to experiment (because it's sandboxed), very easy to deploy and show friends, and it's quite usable language for all sorts of applications. There are more elegant languages (lisp, lua, scala, python) but they fall short at some of mentioned points.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  I don't think it's a perfect choice. I think it's a choice that makes it the "least bad" of a range of languages for a given set of assumptions and compromises. If I could waive a magic wand and make the perfect beginner language, it would not be JavaScript.
untog 11y ago
Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times I assure you, JavaScript programmers understand JavaScript. No need to project onto others.
- mratzloff 11y ago
  Having interviewed quite a number of self-proclaimed JavaScript developers over the course of my career, my experience is that this is debatable at best.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
1) No installation, compilation, or packaging required 2) Runs essentially everywhere 3) Practical (lots of jobs, syntax is close to that of other important languages) 4) Easy to share your creations with friends (see 1 above) 5) Has REPL, garbage collection, closures, objects, recursion, anonymous functions... soon to have TCO. 6) Can be a compilation target for other languages 7) Good libraries for media, 3D graphics 8) Hard for a beginner to trash the machine (at least with browser-based JS, Node of course is a different story) Yeah, it's pretty ugly in spots (it's certainly not as aesthetically pleasing as Scheme), but there are some real advantages there.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Not sure about the jobs (3) thing. It's a bad idea to focus on language popularity when starting out programming, because that changes rapidly. Javascript has only been really popular in the last few years. Who knows what will be popular five years from now. Learn to program. Don't worry so much about the language.

Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times, I never understood why people would want to teach it to people without any programming knowledge.

veli_joza 11y ago

I think JS is perfect choice for first language. Sure, there are many rough edges and dark corners. On the other hand, it's fun, it's safe to experiment (because it's sandboxed), very easy to deploy and show friends, and it's quite usable language for all sorts of applications. There are more elegant languages (lisp, lua, scala, python) but they fall short at some of mentioned points.

moron4hire 11y ago
I don't think it's a perfect choice. I think it's a choice that makes it the "least bad" of a range of languages for a given set of assumptions and compromises. If I could waive a magic wand and make the perfect beginner language, it would not be JavaScript.

untog 11y ago

Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times I assure you, JavaScript programmers understand JavaScript. No need to project onto others.

mratzloff 11y ago
Having interviewed quite a number of self-proclaimed JavaScript developers over the course of my career, my experience is that this is debatable at best.

Turing_Machine 11y ago

1) No installation, compilation, or packaging required 2) Runs essentially everywhere 3) Practical (lots of jobs, syntax is close to that of other important languages) 4) Easy to share your creations with friends (see 1 above) 5) Has REPL, garbage collection, closures, objects, recursion, anonymous functions... soon to have TCO. 6) Can be a compilation target for other languages 7) Good libraries for media, 3D graphics 8) Hard for a beginner to trash the machine (at least with browser-based JS, Node of course is a different story) Yeah, it's pretty ugly in spots (it's certainly not as aesthetically pleasing as Scheme), but there are some real advantages there.

ams6110 11y ago
Not sure about the jobs (3) thing. It's a bad idea to focus on language popularity when starting out programming, because that changes rapidly. Javascript has only been really popular in the last few years. Who knows what will be popular five years from now. Learn to program. Don't worry so much about the language.