Classic computer science problems solved in JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

Classic computer science problems solved in JavaScript

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33 pointszakj12 comments

The more I work with js the more I like it. This project is a great idea, if it can be maintained. I'm fairly interested in figuring something to contribute myself.

Look, JS is a language like any other. If I can do something in assembly, I can do it in JS. Give me IF statements (preferably with nesting support) and variables, and there's nothing that cannot be done.

What remains is how easy, how nice, how flexible, how enjoyable, how compatible, how reliable, how practical.

For me, the answer is C++, but don't let that influence you ;-)

Give me IF statements (preferably with nesting support) and variables, and there's nothing that cannot be done.

I know you were exaggerating here, but simple conditional statements aren't actually sufficient. You need some construct that allows repetition, if only implicitly. "while" loops would be easy, but even simple function calls suffice if you have function pointers (in fact, allowing function pointers alone ought to be enough, without conditionals or even variables).

At any rate, it's the lack vs. presence of repetition constructs that makes SQL not a full general-purpose language, where XSLT actually is.

Add GoTo's to the list, and you're set :)

At the assembly level, everything is boiled down to (basically) bne, mov, and jmp.

i think the real value in doing js implementations is hooking them up to js visualization libraries so that you can do online demos within the webpage; could be great for education. otherwise i don't see the benefit of coding this up in js vs. other similar dynamic languages.

The benefit being that JavaScript is the most popular language in history?

A billion flies can't be wrong.

Just because it's used on almost every webpage, doesn't mean it's popular in the sense of being liked.

Yea, I wish I could <script language='ruby'></script>

Seriously asking here: what would you like more about Ruby as opposed to Javascript if they were in the same boat (i.e. if Ruby had client ubiquity, no systems frameworks, no major non-browser platform, etc)?

Lack of curly braces?

You can... sort of: http://ejohn.org/blog/ruby-vm-in-javascript/

It is certainly the most talked about at this point in time because of it's active competitive development and distribution.

But popular? In what definition?

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