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by vinceguidry 1655 days ago
Get far enough in your career and you realize ecosystems and history, and yes, language dynamics, matter. Javascript never had a module management system. It never had anything close to a strong type system. (at least python and ruby have strong type systems) All these things have to be grafted onto the language later and if you can understand the tyranny backwards-compatibility places a language under, you can understand the plight of NodeJS.

Don't get me wrong, NodeJS is improving... by implementing Ruby features.

1 comments

> It never had anything close to a strong type system

Well yeah. It never claimed to have one.

You're blaming an ecosystem for being unstable, which while I agree, ultimately has nothing to do with the lang itself.

The fact we're discussing the fact one of the most simple libs of a language (logging to the console) can have such a widely felt exploit in such a 'mature' lang makes you're entire point very ironic.

> You're blaming an ecosystem for being unstable, which while I agree, ultimately has nothing to do with the lang itself.

It has everything to do with the language. With no built-in module support (until recently!) and a weak type system, it's virtually impossible for Javascript to get anywhere near the stability of Java.

> makes you're entire point very ironic.

OP made an observation that we're having this conversation for this particular Java vuln but Javascript breakage never provokes anything like this. I don't understand where the ironing is. <insert-Princess-Bride-gif>