The Lie That Has Beguiled a Generation of Developers | Hacker News Reader

The Lie That Has Beguiled a Generation of Developers

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11 pointsberserker-one10 comments

>It is, thus, risible that so many young people are entering the IT industry via the JavaScript route.

What's actually risible is ignoring the fact that programming skills are hugely transferable between languages. I'm not much of a JS fan personally but JS encompasses a pretty good slice of programming paradigms : first class functions, callbacks/CPS, async, oop, etc. I'm struggling to see how having a bunch of young programmers familiar with these concepts entering the industry could be bad.

I recall similar tutting back in the 80s about a whole generation being brain damaged by learning BASIC on micros. That generation did pretty well out of it as it turned out.

Maybe because JavaScript encourages bad habits? It's a very sloppy and undisciplined language, esp. with its loose typing, crazy coercions and wildly inconsistent semantics. This language has far more "warts" than any other programming language in wide use today. Jeff Walker calls it a "minefield": http://walkercoderanger.com/blog/2014/02/javascript-minefiel...

I see it as a very powerful language, which is why it is so easy to mess something up if you don't know what you are doing.

Think of a carpenter. A hand saw is much, much safer than a table saw, but if you mess up, you might have just lost a finger or two. If you're teaching a kid to work with wood, you let him use the hand saw, not the table saw, for obvious reasons. Programming languages can be interpreted in the same vein.

Most of the article came across as condescending. I see JavaScript as being a language that is only just now realizing it's true potential. Web 2.0 was "coined" 17 years ago, and truly got people's attention 12 years ago. Javascript in the browser, of course, predates that by half a decade. Node.js only showed up 6 years ago, and has only recently gained traction in the last 3 years (IMO).

In other words, OF COURSE there's going to be more front-end jobs for JS... it's had a 2-decade runway!!! Node, OTOH, is just now finding its feet in potential applications. That doesn't make me point at it and scoff, but rather to say "this is where the innovation will be!"

Could the reason JS jobs are less plentiful than java is because there are more JS developers? The jobs get filled more quickly?

As far as 'don’t expect any serious shop to be washing their critical Business Intelligence data through JS code', that may be correct, but then there's this https://www.quora.com/What-companies-are-using-Node-js-in-pr...

Of course, some businesses are using Node and JS, but are they using them for mission-critical enterprise work? Node and JS are great for web UI and mobile stuff, and applications of relatively modest size, but for really serious shit? I don't think so.

This raises some really good points! Though I think there is something to be said for a language that is so easy for newcomers to learn and see results.

Doesn't LinkedIn use Node.js?

Yep. So does Wal-Mart.

LinkedIn is significantly more relevant though, since this is their blog.

Well, there's use and then there's use. Are companies like LinkedIn and New York Times using Node for critical enterprise shit, or simply for a web interface for light stuff like mobile and customer interaction? People like to point to PayPal, but that's only one out of hundreds and thousands of major corporations. As the author says, most of the big shops aren't basing their businesses on Node and JS. They put their trust in real languages like Java, C#, Python, C++ and Scala.

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