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by rdtsc 5027 days ago
> There's nothing wrong with JavaScript.

"Beautiful if you it" know also means "this is the only thing I know and the only thing that is viable so I might as well like it".

Was it hailed as a beautiful language when it came out? Why not? I don't remember accolades written about it. Oh because it is the only thing that runs on the browser. Those two things are orthogonal and one doesn't follow from the other no matter how much we try to make it that way.

> Seriously? One code-base with a few cross-device tweaks is, in my opinion, infinitely better than n native apps.

Users don't care how many languages or how many tweaks your product code has. If it is slow to render, it flickers, if it takes forever to do its job, it is shit and it gets thrown away, regardless if it is written in Backbone.js or Ember.js, Haskell, or COBOL. It doesn't matter. That was the point.
2 comments
user24 5025 days ago
> Was it hailed as a beautiful language when it came out? Why not?

Short-sightedness? Confusion between JS and the DOM API? I don't see why you're bringing up "when it came out" either.

> "Beautiful if you know it" know also means "this is the only thing I know"

I don't see how that follows either.

I said that because many developers have a prejudiced impression of JS from the ie/netscape/image rollover days when it was hastily dismissed as a toy. If you spend some time looking at it seriously you can appreciate just how good "the good parts" are.

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ianstormtaylor 5026 days ago
To be fair it wasn't hated "when it came out" because of it's ugliness. The part that made it unusable was browser fragmentation. But, you no longer have to write ridiculously complicated switch-riddled code because of better browser support, standardization and libraries that do it for you.
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rdtsc 5026 days ago
True browser fragmentation was a big problem and however I still don't remember (maybe I was just not aware) of anyone praising the language itself. That is sort of the argument -- it is a beautiful and great language. So regardless of implementation those qualities should have been there.
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