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by jameswburke 4765 days ago
Why the hate on JavaScript? I know it's not the most elegant language in the world, but do we really need this? Instead of a program "x" run in "y", how about we just expand our horizons a bit and learn another language with different paradigms?

Python is great for some stuff, but let JS do what it does.
1 comments
gingerlime 4765 days ago
I don't hate javascript, and there are good arguments to learn new languages. Absolutely. But it's a bit of a my-way-or-the-highway with client-side web.

I wish I could have a choice of the language to run in the browser, and still do all the things javascript can. Having some kind of a bytecode virtual machine on the browser, that many different languages can compile to, might be the best solution.

an interesting rant from Zed Shaw on this http://vimeo.com/43380467

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jameswburke 4765 days ago
The issue with web (although this could be expanded to apply to most languages) is where it's used/interpreted. Browsers aren't a quickly changing environment (haha, IE 6). It takes a few years to adopt the latest and greatest. Shit, it took nearly a decade for us to see native curved corners (border-radius).

Again, not that I don't agree, it's just hard to stay up to date with the greatest while still trying to support outdated tech like html tables.

The W3C is the 'authority', but is really at the hands of the major browser manufacturers. Implementing an interpreted version of Python sounds great, but is it worth the time and effort? Will it increase my productivity or compliance compared to JavaScript? As of now, nope.

I'm happy writing bastardized JS (not that my code is bastardized, rather that's just the language [took way too long to understand == vs ===]) for the web right now. Every day new tools and frameworks are developed to make it easier, and I just don't see the advantage and overhead just to write a weird version of python that compiles into JS.

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