[athanagor2]

> The only reason to do something like this is if you only know Python and refuse to use anything else.

The ignorance and prejudice of most developers are staggering. They simply think "Javascript is shit", and all their arguments boil down to jokes about NaN and the weird behavior of ==. JS is (by far) not a jewel of a PL but it's telling that those people don't know anything about the real cursed and weird parts of JS (such as: eval does not behave the same depending on how you call it...).

[coldtea]

>those people don't know anything about the real cursed and weird parts of JS (such as: eval does not behave the same depending on how you call it...)

That's because that's a non issue, as you shouldn't be calling eval in the first place.

[athanagor2]

The other things I wrote about are also non-issues (in practice). They are just ignorant. I could also write about the result of `parseInt(0.0000005)`, which could be more of a real problem.

[fragmede]

You can dismiss their objections as childish, but people are gonna write in the language they want to (or are paid to) write in. If there's a large body of existing python code they'd have to rewrite in JavaScript, or use some python in the browser route for their purposes, why should we force other people to use typescript because some of us think it's better?

of course, LLMs, with their nascent ability to translate code into different languages, makes the question of rewriting something in a different language more tractable, but it's still a hike.

[athanagor2]

> You can dismiss their objections as childish, but people are gonna write in the language they want to (or are paid to) write in. If there's a large body of existing python code they'd have to rewrite in JavaScript, or use some python in the browser route for their purposes, why should we force other people to use typescript because some of us think it's better?

An existing codebase can certainly be an obstacle in adopting a PL but I don't think that's the main motivation in practice.

> of course, LLMs, with their nascent ability to translate code into different languages, makes the question of rewriting something in a different language more tractable, but it's still a hike.

Entirely agree. In my current company there's quite a bit of reluctance to spend some bucks to have good tools and I resent it. Rewriting (quickly!) some Python into say, C++, would be absolutely great.

[amonroe805-2]

I mean, these things aren’t static. Python may be the second most popular language (behind JS/TS) today, but what if elixir takes over 10 years from now? There is no need for browsers to implement every language-of-the-day.

Additionally, browser JS adheres to a quite strict backwards compatibility requirements. Python can and does deprecate and remove APIs, and I would imagine the community would not like to lose that flexibility.

WASM is probably the best bet here, in that it provides a well-specified low-level target, such that the door is open for other languages for anyone who is allergic to learning/using javascript.

[dangus]

Or perhaps you've got it backwards: there's no reason for browsers to prevent anyone from implementing any language they want.

JS and backwards compatibility gave me a chuckle...try hanging out on the web in IE11.

[pjaoko]

What is the difference between the DOM API, a JavaScript engine and the JS language specification?