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Comment by voidfiles | Hacker News Reader

Whoa, JavaScript is so much better then PHP.

From what I understand, working in Javascript is by default a terrible situation, and you have to go out of your way to do anything good (hence the plethora of structural frameworks). This is why you never see a book like "C: the good parts" or "Ruby: the good parts." And from my limited knowledge of it, the good parts of Javascript are Self (or, I guess, Coffeescript).

It's like people living near Albany NY who are "so close to Boston, NYC, and Montreal!" Yeah you may be close to "there," but you aren't there. I can assure you the people living in Boston, NYC and Montreal are never excited to visit Albany.

First off, the premise that because the language has frameworks means that it's bad language is false. Ruby has rails, C has the standard library. You don't rewrite everything from the ground up every time you make a program.

Second, there are a lot of frameworks for so many reasons. One big reason is the each browser has a slightly different DOM implementation. Frameworks just smooth over the differences.

Working with the Javascript HTML DOM API is a terrible situation, and you have to go out of your way to work around that brokenness to do anything good with the DOM.

Javascript the language, and most libraries/APIs written for Javascript using Javascript idioms, are very pleasant.

I 100% agree that the DOM API is a terrible situation. I don't agree that JS is pleasant. When you run a marathon, your legs ache, and that's the DOM API (and all the other concerns of web programming). JS is the little blister on your foot. It hurts too. CS is the vaseline on that little blister. Sure, you still have to run the marathon, and it's gonna suck. But at least the blister is no longer a problem, so you can focus on the bigger issues.

PHP is an ugly language, but its issues are way more manageable. The worst PHP code I worked with was easier to understand and debug than an average JQuery plugin I've worked with.

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