[Gibbon1]

A month ago I found a bug in command line utility I wrote in C# and hadn't touched in 8 years. I checked out the project and opened it in Visual Studio. And it compiled. I fixed the bug and it just worked. End to end it took half an hour. I feel like there is an advantage to libraries and tools managed by adults with long term skin in the game.

[hutzlibu]

As a counter point: I have simple node scripts, that serve the same purpose to me. And there was also the need to fix something 2 days ago in an 8 year old script. Opened the file, changed the code and running it again. Took 5 minutes and it just worked.

I don't use js because it is the hot new thing, but rather because it is simple. (But I avoid messy and obscure npm repositories wherever possible for example.)

[yakshaving_jgt]

> I don't use js because it is the hot new thing, but rather because it is simple.

It infamously isn't.

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

[Zpalmtree]

Most of these are 'gotchas' that rarely happen in real code because they're all due to implicit type conversions

[AgentME]

Yeah, nothing there affects regular programs even a tenth as bad as say quoting rules and space handling affect average Bash shell scripts.

[FeistySkink]

Wouldn't shellcheck catch most of these?

[hutzlibu]

Hm, video arguments are not my take, I did not watch it (yet), but in either case this seems to be opinion.

But of course, javascript is so simple, that it is not suitable for complex problems. No (sane) person would ever claim, that it is the right language for every problem.

[yakshaving_jgt]

Are you familiar with the No True Scotsman logical fallacy?

[hutzlibu]

Yes, but I do not know, what you are trying to tell me.

[yakshaving_jgt]

I am suggesting that you are making exactly this kind of fallacious argument when you say “No (sane) person would ever claim, that it is the right language for every problem.”

[vasergen]

People always underestimate how stable JS is. I would argue that it is more stable and backward compatible than a lot of backend languages. What is not stable in JS - is a whole ecosystem.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I've been laughed at for scripting in Java, but I have a bunch of such scripts from 15-20 years ago and guess what, they work out of the box like the first day.

[nazgulsenpai]

You can also patch most classic .NET (4.8 and below) "binaries" in place with something like dnSpy. One example: I had to update a simple command line tool someone else wrote to poll an API that had undergone some changes. Was able to make the changes directly in dnSpy without having to even open Visual Studio. I haven't tried with any of the 5.0+ versions so I don't know if this is still the case.

[smrtinsert]

Same thing with java. Literally pick up where you left off. The issue of not working after some time just isn't an issue.

[skitter]

That's how it should work. But of course last week I revisited a project I wrote in C# too, this only 3 years old, and apart from dotnet complaining about the target framework not being supported any more, I couldn't get it working again due to the libraries used.

[metaltyphoon]

This makes no sense. If you upgraded your libraries, thats in you to fix it tho.