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Comment by 778hbff | Hacker News Reader

> JS is the first language to really solve the distribution problem

Excuse me, what? I just spilled my coffee all over the desk.

Care to explain what you mean with the problem and how js "solved" it? In my view dependencies and distribution are terrible in javascript, but maybe we mean different things.

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JavaScript is the only language in which you can write a program and distribute to every device in the world, today, cheaply and reliably. (technically this is an exaggeration - not everything has a browser. but you get the point.)

You don't need to write it though. The average Internet building person would be better off writing in a language which isn't terrible, and only using JS as the bytecode of the web.

Maybe. I think of it as an experiment. You may be right. It may also be that the potential of raw javascript hasn't been fully explored. That's my hypothesis. I don't think jquery was the best it could do. Time will tell who is right!

JavaScript won’t go through any revolutionary fundamental change because such a change would break the entire internet.

Believe it or not, some of us have written other "not terrible" languages and actually prefer JavaScript.

I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe that someone can become proficient in a technology which forbids runtime errors and doesn’t bitrot, and then think “you know what, I wish my programs would error more at runtime and also refuse to compile because dependencies changed.”

To want more failure is to be insane. I think rather a lot of programmers think they’ve tried alternatives, but in reality have experimented with syntax swaps of what is essentially the same language.

What language are you referring to? It sounds like you have something very specific in mind, because the usual “not terrible” suspects (Python, Ruby, Rust, Go, etc) don’t have the properties you’re talking about.

Ruby and Python are essentially syntax swaps of the same language. Also not sure how practical it is to write in any of Ruby, Python, Go, or Rust and generate JavaScript.

Elm would be an example of a language which is fundamentally better than JavaScript (and is a practical substitute for what most people are writing JavaScript for), but it isn't the only one.

I’ve been using Elm for over five years on personal projects, but it isn’t a replacement for Javascript as a language, just some client side projects and ones where its async ffi is sufficient.

I think you are falling into a trap of thinking there is a “best” in engineering when that’s basically never the case. Ask experienced developers why they prefer Javascript if you want to get a more nuanced view. I almost always reach for Javascript first, especially for server applications.

I am an experienced developer.

So am I, and yet we hold different opinions about which languages to choose for different purposes.

This article might interest you: https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ (you seem to be tribe 1, I'm probably tribe 3)

I can see why you have come to that opinion, but I would actually put myself immediately into tribe 3.

My code is not poetry; it kinda sucks. I’m not a gifted programmer, which is why I make up for my shortcomings with better tools. I use Haskell entirely for the sake of pragmatism [and have in fact bet my businesses on it]. My experience is such that I can build something that just works much more quickly and reliably in Haskell or Elm than I ever could in PHP or Ruby or JavaScript or Clojure[Script]. And I wrote each of these professionally for years.

That's all and good, but you said you can't believe other people could prefer certain languages. I'm saying that you can simply find them and ask them. And not beginners but veteran engineers.

In other words, there's a simple way to disabuse yourself of your position in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34257196 -- just ask experienced engineers why they prefer languages that you consider to be irreparable.

How about Java, C/C++, the .NET languages or Rust?

I mentioned Rust, and I left Java and C/C++ out for a reason. Also, none of them have the properties in question (forbids runtime errors and doesn't bitrot).

It's not even clear that a language exists, as we know it, that doesn't bitrot.

> I mentioned Rust

Ah sorry, overlooked that.

I just spent most of the afternoon trying to make a government java program work. It won't apply electronic signatures. I know because it throws 47-line exception tracebacks and does nothing on the UI. Its documentation is for windows xp and windows 7. Yes it is the last version, from mid last year. That's real bitrot.

Related to C pray they didn't hardcode implicitly something of the architecture. Or be surprised when a bad pointer fails in one OS but works in another.

The .net languages are wonderful. The best time I remember in my life was trying to debug what version of the .net runtime was required for a program. So much better than getting laid or going on holiday /s

Compiling to JS doesn't solve the problem because the language (JS) isn't the problem. The problem is the browser and its inadequacy for building applications in many areas - lots of APIs that are not fit for purpose as well as simiarly inadequate protocols.

This environment is additionally hostile to compilation - TypeScript had to bring some really amazing type system features to the table to get most engineers to reluctantly accept the headaches of compilation for the browser.

ES6 Modules, HTTP/2 and sourcemaps were supposed to fix these issues to some extent and all of them created major new headaches instead. Its like there is something fundamentally broken about the browser that we don't fully understand, successfully sabotaging all solutions we come up with.

The JS ecosystem is the furthest ahead in making this broken environment barely usable with a bunch of hacks to compensate for its shortcomings - a new language will need to fight hard to get close.

I love Typescript

It is not always aspects of stability that are most important. I prefer js because it might be the fastest language to get an MVP out the door, among other things.

I think the economic argument you're making is the most sensible one, and it's going to be highly context dependent. Personally, I subscribe to the idiom that nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.

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