[heavenlyblue]

It's impressive how most of the progress in the JS land is essentially adding the features most of the other languages have already had for years (or - at least had done them properly in the first place).

And I do understand why - it's just quite pathetic to see all of that being done for no practical reason.

[bryanlarsen]

Sure, Haskell & OCaml have had a lot of these features for years, but they can hardly be called "most languages". Other languages are also in the progress of adding similar features (C++, for example) or aren't getting them (C).

Javascript has more library churn, but the alternative is being stuck on something like BOOST. ugh.

[heavenlyblue]

Let's be clear: JavaScript tries to be both a platform and a programming language.

People hate it because there's no practical reason why we're forced to use JavaScript in order to program - and most of the people who are productive are probably using some sort of variation on ECMAScript that makes it bearable anyway.

[CharlesW]

> Let's be clear: JavaScript tries to be both a platform and a programming language.

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. JavaScript is the common language for two major platforms (browsers, Node.js) and many smaller ones (Cocos2d, enyo JS, Espruino, GNOME Shell, Kinoma XS6, NativeScript, Weex, etc.).

[heavenlyblue]

Um what?

- browsers: used since the 90s because there's no other alternative

- node.js: created because JS is used in browsers and it's easier to write code in a single language for browsers and servers

- Cocos2d: you're clearly lying as the only place where JS is mentioned is Cocos2d-html, as there's again - no alternative

- enyo JS: again, used clearly due to the fact that modern - browsers are available for all of the modern platforms

- Weex, NativeScript: typical "native app" libraries which use a webkit pane for most of the rendering, again - javascript here is circumstantial since you can't choose anything else

- GNOME Shell, Kinoma XS6: OK. These are the only ones that make any sort of a strong point in your message; but as far as it goes - modern linux distros are moving to Python for systems programming anyway. So learning JS here is a miss.

[weego]

It's also incredibly frustrating that every step that is rediscovered that other languages just have is then subject to endless fragmentation over trivial differences that are put forward as core philosophical concerns. I know this is not unique to the JS ecosystem but it's definitely a lot worse than I've seen in the past.

[bromuro]

Which past are you talking about? Before the last years progresses, to make your javascript working on multiple browser your only choice was to lock you learning huge frameworks and toolkits like jquery and dojo, or spend hours during your weekends to get a project working on multiple platforms.

Those times were painful, now it’s much much better.

[skeeterbug]

Yeah, I don't think these people worked on code that targeted IE6-8. Horrible times.

[weego]

I've been writing production JavaScript since 1999. Writing compatible JS used to be a horrible pain, now everything about writing and maintaining your JS is the pain and browsers by comparison are highly forgiving.

[chairmanwow]

Thanks for sharing! This is a viewpoint that I've never encountered before as only having entered the game in the last 3 years.

[weego]

I'm talking more ecosystem than core language changes. Though of course, core language changes are part of the build and tooling ecosystem because of everyone constantly wanting to write code that is years ahead of what browsers are actually supporting. Build and package management tooling, frameworks etc.