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Comment by Mugwort | Hacker News Reader

Javascript is still missing simplicity, consistency and a unified core set of ideas. It will always be that way too. Javascript will always be something grudgingly accepted or used with some misgiving. ES6 has some very nice features and the good parts of javascript stand out as much as the unfortunate inconsistencies lurking inside the language. People know how to use it. Some use it quite well but I always get the feeling I have to step around carefully and not make a dumb mistake in js which is easier to do than almost any other language except say PHP. Web assembly should open up some badly needed possibilities. All we really need is a consistent API. A world without js? I hope so.

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I feel like this opinion is too popular so I just want to respectfully speak my peace. I'm a relatively new developer and I never learned any of the languages that a lot of the old guard fawns over, but after learning coding with Racket, Java, and Python, JavaScript (especially TypeScript) has always felt, and continues to feel, awesome.

I agree with @jdpigeon

People who come from other languages often make “dumb mistakes” because they try to apply their existing mental models of programming to a language that works differently.

I don't know what languages you're referring to but I didn't have my eyes opened until I spent significant amounts of time learning Haskell. I think any language with suitably advanced type system would do: ocaml/reason, rust, swift, etc. All the OO c-derived languages feel super bland to me since they all deliver equivalent expressive power, more or less. You get a really different experience once you get a language with a more capable type system.

Honestly I'm kind of surprised that Racket didn't stand out to you, it's a super cool language and very different from everything else on your list. How much time have you spent using it?

Haskell is probably #1 for languages that old guard types fawn over and, yea, I think it's pretty cool, but don't ever expect to be in a situation where I get paid to write it.

I really liked Racket a lot actually! It turned me on to the whole functional programming style that I still try to maintain in JavaScript. Unfortunately, I only got to write it for a semester in school and when I moved on to JavaScript enjoyed not having the insanity of all those parentheses and not having to do everything myself (via js array functions, lodash, and the npm ecosystem)

Maybe there's a reason people keep saying it? I guess you'll never know until you try it yourself.

> enjoyed not having the insanity of all those commas and not having to do everything myself

Racket has a pretty robust std library that includes things like folds, maps, zips and whatever else you'd be using from lodash. It's also pretty void of commas, not really sure what you mean.

commas -> parentheses

There was a time when I never thought I'd get paid to write unit tests. In fact, I often joked about how much I wanted to write tests but that it was completely unrealistic to expect the industry to change. When my boss suddenly jumped on board the testing bandwagon I thought, "I'd better not lose this job. I'll never find another one like it". Things do change!

IMO you should learn one functional language well and then you'll have a good contrast to compare against.

> Javascript will always be something grudgingly accepted or used with some misgiving.

Always? I hope you're only speaking for yourself? Lots of people come to JavaScript from another language, never put in the time to learn JavaScript, and then just complain about it. That used to be me. And then I committed myself to learning the language really well. And now I enjoy using it. I know lots of programmers who also love it. I've used a lot of languages but I don't think I'm qualified to say which is the "best". But I do know that I really like JS.

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