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by Homunculiheaded
3617 days ago
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The best answer to this is the success of JavaScript. JavaScript historically has been a deeply flawed language. However, it was able to become one of the most widely used languages precisely because, despite all its warts, it implements the core foundations from the lambda calculus correctly (lambda functions, first class functions and closures). This allowed JS programmers enormous power to overcome these warts. Here are two examples: JavaScript historically has no way to do namespacing. In most languages this would be a deal breaker. But because JavaScript has lambda functions, closures and first class functions a solution could be crafted from scratch! Immediately-Invoked Function Expressions (IIFE) were one of the most powerful early techniques to create scopes on the fly in JavaScript. Without these tools from the lambda calculus you would normally have to rely on language level changes to allow these problems to be fixed. The other early challenge of JavaScript was the need for asynchronous callbacks. Often these require passing around data that you might not have access to when a function is written. Lambda functions allow programmers to quickly write ad hoc logic. First class functions allow programmers to pass around this logic. And most importantly closures allow you to create functions on the fly based on data that is not known until an asynchronous callback is applied. Again without the core ideas of the lambda calculus in place this type of power would require significant language-level design changes. 10 years ago JavaScript was a hideous language, with many major issues. But because in this mess was contained the power of the lambda calculus the language was able to be salvaged and extended to a wide range of uses. |
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You think that's why Javascript is widely used? I think it's widely used because it was already useable within the browser and people just kept going with it.