Hacker News Reader

Comment by tracker1 | Hacker News Reader

It's funny, but I like JS a lot, still think that Python is probably a better learning language... there's enough sharp edges in JS, that I don't think it's great for starting with, other than it's accessible, and combined with a browser, close to instant gratification.

View on HN

Teaching JS to kids? Let's hook Dijkstra up to a dynamo, he'll be spinning in his grave fast enough!

I think it's great in the sense that you can easily make apps, games etc. which is good for getting kids interested quickly. Once their hooked, we can push them to some of the "better" languages.

As long as Python actively refuses to support real constants among some other immutability related features, I think the more recent versions of JS are going to get past Python in sheer elegance of code.

I'm inclined to agree to some extent... I think that JS can be beautiful and intuitive. However, I've seen too many instances of the following.

    var bazCopy = [];
    for (var i=0; i<bar.baz.length; i++) {
      var orig = bar.baz[i];
      bazCopy[i] = {
        fizz: orig.fiz,
        buzz: orig.buzz
      };
    }
    parentCopy.baz = bazCopy;

Over map/reduce/filter, and the like... Sometimes doing code reviews on pull requests is exhausting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com