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by bluejekyll 3403 days ago
Yes. People really hate JavaScript that much. ES6 brought some sanity to the language, but I continue to be firmly in the camp of continuing to hate and despise its existence.
3 comments

Weird. I remember hating it ages ago. So much so that I was developing a Python->JavaScript transpiler (before all the cool kids were writing transpilers!) and blogging about how bad it was [1].

Granted, that was back in 2008 and most of my complaints have been addressed now almost a decade later (except for destructors, it still doesn't have those, but I also don't need them anymore).

These days I move between JavaScript, Python, Go, and C seamlessly and I can honestly say that I don't hate any of them as much as clients, managers, and 3rd party code.

[1] http://davywybiral.blogspot.com/2008/01/javascript-bad.html

People have definitely had and continue to have successful careers in, and many actually enjoy, JS.

I would never debate that. I think language choice for many people is a personal decision. There are some that I will hold my nose and use; not even complain too much. There are others that the minute there is an alternative to, I would use that instead. JS is in the latter camp for me.

If it helps, my current favorite language is Rust... they may be syntactically similar, but I just can't stand the semantics, or lack there of, of JS.

This could be said for any language.

Yes. People really hate C that much. C++ brought some sanity to the language, but I continue to be firmly in the camp of continuing to hate and despise its existence.

It's a bit different. For system level programming you have a choice to get around C/C++.

For browser programming, or full stack in a single language, you have less choice, and none if you reject transpiling.

Right, with JS there's almost no choice. C/C++ I actually really like, but I fear the great harm that I can inflict upon myself and others with them.

Anyway, the nouns are important.

These people are probably over represented here else things like Node.js, Electron would have never existed - and be successful.
Electron is awesome. And with webassembly, I think electron will be even better. Electrons success is because it offers a single Dev experience across all major platforms, windows, macOS, Linux and the web.

It's a great container for reducing the work to deliver code across platforms.

JavaScript is a necessary evil right now; it's the least common denominator for delivery. I would probably choose typescript if I were starting a new app right now to target it, though I want to play with Rust and webassembly soon.

It's success is not bc of JavaScript; it's because it merges the cross platform Dev experience.