Comment by brilliantcode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brilliantcode | Hacker News Reader

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The big objection to Javascript is likely arising from what you've seen 10~20 years ago. The fact is, the older you are, the more likely you will reject it.

I'd say look hard at your own skepticism and actually test it out. While it doesn't make sense to write a blog using React/Redux, what one needs to get over is he fact that Javascript is no longer just "rendering documents" but the next evolution in software development as everybody moves to using a common codebase and components.

Why build complicated native applications when a thinly wrapped SPA in Electron will be indistinguishable to the customer? The only objection here is the engineer's ego and reversion to the familiar.

Enterprises will still run on Java, but minimizing code and weight the ROI on managing existing legacy technical debt for a simple CRUD desktop application vs. utilizing current Javascript technologies will be a continued pattern as Javascript wins more buy-in from the corporate executives.

This is coming from the biggest Javascript skeptic. After learning that the problems Javascript were solving were already very difficult, I feel more comfortable speaking the most active language on the web. Nay, I feel anxious that I've not fully caught up with Javascript technologies.

That isn't a fact, just a personal opinion. Disagreement with that opinion isn't a matter of ego or having an outdated view. A lot of people have looked hard at the language and actually tested it out and found many actual flaws. To rule that out you have to assume that everyone except you is just being stupid.

At best, you can do things with it, and you still have to if you want to run on browsers, so if it makes you happy you have some happy years ahead of you before it becomes irrelevant. But other than running on browsers, the main reason anyone uses it is that they are familiar with it or have sunk costs and aren't really that aware of the alternatives. Javascript has nothing that many other languages didn't have before it, except that artificially enforced monopoly on running in browsers.

I find it amusing to find so many luddites on HN. Take what you will but you are going to find to hard software engineering jobs in 10 years when everything moves to Javascript and Frontend Application development becomes the new norm. With progressive web apps, that day is closer than you think.

Opinion sure, but some are more probable than others, and valuable in predicting the future and allocating resources accordingly.

The most used language on stackoverflow is Javascript, does not tell you anything about trends?

Javascript is no longer the hack you are thinking of with ES6. ES6 is world class and I find it hard to fathom 19 year olds in SV building desktop applications using Java Swing & FX (which supposedly some old timer HN claim is happening which is a lie because it's way more time consuming, I've built with Java Swing and Electron and people commenting have no fucking clue the night and day difference) vs Node.js + Frontend framework of some sort. Walmart also adopted Node.js fairly quickly which sort of kills the argument that Java is king. In fact, less code is a trend in the enterprise with the rise of Scala and other less verbose languages that run on top of JVM.

Javascript has evolved from it's humble roots in the browser, it is now expanding and finding developer mindshare well beyond the browser (in case you didn't know about Node.js).

I find it hard to continue this discussion when it's clear you haven't spent any time recently with Javascript and instead relying on your outdated misconceptions about Javascript.

Please spend some time with the modern javascript tech stack before you offer a rebuttal so you are using the latest facts.

Wow. just wow. The notion that anyone less than pleased with the idea of Javascript everywhere is a luddite is beyond shockingly absurd. "Javascript-everywhere"(as you appear to advocate) is, at it's core, a denial of the rest of the technological eco-system. (The web makes a lousy UI... see "the 90's") Languages have their use-cases. Javascript is only becoming hackier and hackier as it attempts to agglomerate "classes" etc. (as a prototypical-inheritance single-threaded language that was DESIGNED to run in the browser initially) While one can only complain of minor brain damage from learning it, and it certainly has it's front-end web uses, I find your comment utterly bizarre.

> Javascript is only becoming hackier and hackier

ES6 is NOT a hack. It's world class and expressive. It definitely doesn't resemble the old Javascript.

> prototypical-inheritance single-threaded language that was DESIGNED to run in the browser initially)

Yes, said by literally every evolving technology. Javascript is NOT rendering in your browser anymore. It's powering a lot of mission critical applications used by the same people who once bought into JVM and now choosing to opt for rewrite using lighter and saner stacks.

> While one can only complain of minor brain damage from learning it, and it certainly has it's front-end web uses

It's not limited to front-end but back-end. This alone brings a ton of value by removing the context switching between different languages.

Reading your comment, it's clear you haven't spent enough time with Javascript by calling it a "hack". Node.js is not a "hack" and neither is NPM. These are the new tools of the trade that's dominating all other stacks (just take a look at stackoverflow-its a measure of everyone).

I can't believe some people would be willing to push Java Swing/FX to their developers when a far more lighter and saner platform exists in the form of think HTML5 clients.

Single Page Applications are the same as desktop to 99.99% of the users out there. Your customers don't give a shit if it's written in Java Swing or Electron + SPA. What they do care is that you move as quick as their changing expectations. You can't do this with a late 90s technology built on the assumption software should mimic a heavily short sighted interpretation of the world-that you should write everything in terms of classes because the world is made out of objects and hide many parameters and layers buried under a hierarchy. To be more insulting, Java applications require a heavy JVM pre-requisite on the client side, riddled with zero day security vulnerabilities.

> Why build complicated native applications when a thinly wrapped SPA in Electron will be indistinguishable to the customer?

I just fired up Atom and various vim versions.

Atom uses 225.8 MB of RAM without any documents open.

MacVim uses 39.8 MB without any documents open.

Console vim uses 23.3 MB.

Console neovim uses 10.0 MB.

25x memory usage differences seem pretty distinguishable to me, especially in an application used to read and write plain text.

Atom is a full IDE rendered on the desktop.

Vim is a terminal based IDE.

The sky is blue.

A closer analog to Atom is Sublime. It uses less than 50MB of RAM, and starts faster than Atom. (Myself, I've found VS Code to be a good compromise in the middle)

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