Is JavaScript a Dysfunctional Programming Language?

medium.com

6 points·berserker-one··3 comments

Excellent piece! The author makes a number of strong points about software engineering. I looked at some of his other articles at JavaScript Non Grata, and he consistently recommends using transpiled languages instead of JS, at least on the front end. On the back end, there are many solid alternatives to JS. (Unless you really, really want to use Node.js.)

Yet another JavaScript-bashing rant. Comedic lines include:

"a scientific study has shown JavaScript to be one of the least productive languages in IT"

"There may well be some large applications written in JavaScript (I don’t actually know)"

I came back to this article again, and actually, I'm now reconsidering my initial reaction. While it does contain a few abrasive or seemingly unsubstantiated statements, the article does make valid points about the suitability of JavaScript for "serious software engineering".

There's a recent article describing how a company was basically forced to migrate from Node.js to Go, due to the architectural limitations of the former: The Way of the Gopher (https://medium.com/@theflapjack103/the-way-of-the-gopher-669...). This was a convincing real-world example of how a JavaScript backend is not scaleable in some cases, with concrete data to back it up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com