I don't know, I rank not having integers pretty high on the list of faults. Wasn't there just a huge debacle with node being unable to represent inodes properly?
The inodes thing was about lack of 64-bit ints specifically. As I understand it, it was a bug where Node converted inode values to floats (instead of using strings or pairs of 32-bit ints or whatever). One could argue that the bug wouldn't have happened if JS had 64-bit ints, but anyway it's not a foundational thing.
The performance implication of JS not having ints is a different matter. In practice, if you write code that treats a variable like an int, modern JS engines will correctly compile that into bytecode where it really is an int, and performance will be as expected.
So the lack of an int type doesn't really hurt performance, though one can argue that it makes it harder to write performant code.
We're discussing programming language benchmarks. If one was forced to write all of a C or C++ or even Go program using only doubles, and not integers, and only hash tables, not arrays, undoubtedly it would become slower. The impressive thing about Node.js is that it is as fast as it is despite JavaScript not having integers or arrays.
No, we're not discussing language benchmarks anymore. The parent I replied to claimed that not having integers is not a big deal -- I disagree. It's a huge deal.
They go on to say:
> If you don't enjoy JS, it's because you haven't taken the time to learn what's great about it and have gotten hung up on the stupid things other people do with it or you're copying their mistakes.
Which is... wrong. Many, many programmers dislike JavaScript and node.js because of its flaws. I don't think Stockholm syndrome is an appropriate prescription.
The performance implication of JS not having ints is a different matter. In practice, if you write code that treats a variable like an int, modern JS engines will correctly compile that into bytecode where it really is an int, and performance will be as expected.
So the lack of an int type doesn't really hurt performance, though one can argue that it makes it harder to write performant code.