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Comment by Safety1stClyde | Hacker News Reader

I program in Go and JavaScript, but don't enjoy it.

I assure you that JavaScript is an interpreted language, and it does not have arrays or integers. This is not a harsh statement but a factual one.

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The JS language as specified is interpreted and doesn't have ints or first-class arrays; the code run by the VM that runs Node.js code is compiled and runs on smallints and arrays and so on.

(Not sure if you already knew this, but if so, you're not being factual, you're being selectively pedantic to make something sound worse than it is. Lack of ints or arrays isn't a big factor in JS performance for non-pathological cases.)

(edit: reasons for downvotes are appreciated!)

There's plenty to not like about JS, but being interpreted and not having integers or arrays is not high on its negatives list. The little bit of good far outweighs the whole lot of bad.

If you don't enjoy JS, it's because you haven't taken the time to learn what's great about it and have gotten hung up on the stupid things other people do with it or you're copying their mistakes.

> There's plenty to not like about JS, but being interpreted and not having integers or arrays is not high on its negatives list.

We are having a discussion is about programming language benchmarks.

A benchmark in this case is a measure of how fast a computer program can run. A computer program is a series of instructions for a computer. These instructions are written in something called a programming language. A programming language which is interpreted is inherently slower than a programming language which is compiled to assembly language. A programming language which does not have integers but must represent all numbers as floating point numbers is inherently slower than a programming language which has integers. A programming language which does not have arrays, but must represent arrays using hash tables, is inherently slower than a language which does have arrays. Thus, Node.js, which is interpreted and does not have arrays or integers, would be expected to be have much lower benchmarks than Go's, and yet node.js has exceptionally high performance.

that's a very simplistic exploration of a very complex subject

(edited for negativity and ad-hominem)

JavaScript is compiled to assembly language in modern runtimes like v8. You are confusing a language with the language implementation.

For example --

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32/compare.php?lang...

I don't know, I rank not having integers pretty high on the list of faults. Wasn't there just a huge debacle with node being unable to represent inodes properly?

We're discussing programming language benchmarks. If one was forced to write all of a C or C++ or even Go program using only doubles, and not integers, and only hash tables, not arrays, undoubtedly it would become slower. The impressive thing about Node.js is that it is as fast as it is despite JavaScript not having integers or arrays.

No, we're not discussing language benchmarks anymore. The parent I replied to claimed that not having integers is not a big deal -- I disagree. It's a huge deal.

They go on to say:

> If you don't enjoy JS, it's because you haven't taken the time to learn what's great about it and have gotten hung up on the stupid things other people do with it or you're copying their mistakes.

Which is... wrong. Many, many programmers dislike JavaScript and node.js because of its flaws. I don't think Stockholm syndrome is an appropriate prescription.

The inodes thing was about lack of 64-bit ints specifically. As I understand it, it was a bug where Node converted inode values to floats (instead of using strings or pairs of 32-bit ints or whatever). One could argue that the bug wouldn't have happened if JS had 64-bit ints, but anyway it's not a foundational thing.

The performance implication of JS not having ints is a different matter. In practice, if you write code that treats a variable like an int, modern JS engines will correctly compile that into bytecode where it really is an int, and performance will be as expected.

So the lack of an int type doesn't really hurt performance, though one can argue that it makes it harder to write performant code.

> If you don't enjoy JS, it's because you haven't taken the time to learn what's great about it and have gotten hung up on the stupid things other people do with it or you're copying their mistakes.

oh come on now, it's perfectly ok for people to dislike a language for any number of reasons. I don't hate JS but I don't particularly enjoy it, and that could be said for a number of popular languages. it has nothing to do with "taking the time" to learn anything - some people just don't jive with JS and that's totally cool.

I think you're in the right here, but that's a little too far. I don't enjoy programming in JS, because I really like strong typing. And that's ok. You seem to be implying that everyone who doesn't like JS is deluded or arrogant, but that's not the case.

That last paragraph is a logical fallacy, because it posits that one's distaste for JavaScript could only come via ignorance. I will offer my own anecdotal experience to refute that assertion. I've been forced to use JavaScript since the 1990s, and have done significant amounts of work in Node for several companies. I dislike Node and JavaScript because JavaScript has a weak standard library, ugly syntax, is slow, is a pain to scale, and a pain to write complex code with. I will absolutely give credit to the Node community for improving JavaScript, in both speed and syntax, and admit that JavaScript is better now than it ever has been; however, so are most popular languages. Personally, I've removed JavaScript from my resume, and turn down jobs that use it. If I have to use it for some reason, I can, but right now, I typically avoid it altogether by using Elm, and real server-side languages on the backend. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know JavaScript and still don't like it.

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