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Comment by soggybutter | Hacker News Reader

Modern JS is a passable language only after a tremendous amount of time and effort was invested to retrofit it as such. For all of the purported isomorphic benefits, I still don't know why anyone would choose to use it outside of being forced to in browsers

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I don't really mind that "a tremendous amount of time and effort was invested" into JS.

It works great for me and my team and we are hugely productive using it. That why. It works and we deliver a lot of value.

You don't mind, because someone else spent the money. The people signing the checks probably did care.

It works great for you because you haven't seen better. Which other languages do you have more than 1 year of professional experience with? May I answer that for you? None. Just because you've just discovered a knife, doesn't mean it's the best tool to eat the soup with.

Javascript, like python, was "simple yet flexible". Thats what made them successful.

When a language is successful, people start to bolt on extra bits of syntax and features (async, prototypes/classes, lambdas, etc). Eventually it is no longer simple, and the learning curve gets steeper for new users.

Someone comes up with a new simple yet flexible language, all the new users start with that instead, and the cycle repeats.

BASIC/visual basic/VB.net went through that cycle in the 90's. C then C++ went through that in the 2010's. Python/Javascript is going through that now. Go is about to go through the same.

Go was trashed just about the time they added telemetry to it inherently.

You mean when they added the plan to add opt-in telemetry?

All the "good" languages have tremendous effort - it's how they get good. Nothing starts great...it's a journey. We've been watching the sausage being made.

Most languages were OK and got enhancements, JS was terrible and got repaired.

Python, for example, got a lot better a lot faster than JS did.

Just because "it's a journey" and we invested tremendous effort, doesn't mean it's suddenly great. It's a terrible language with many illnesses, even today's modern version, because it's kept its diseases from the past. It surely is lightyears better than what it used to be, but it's still a pile of turd IMO (I work with JS every day).

> a tremendous amount of time and effort was invested to retrofit it as such

Great things require tremendous effort and even time.

That’s why git and JS don’t really belong on this list without a massive asterisk. It’s not like JS you use today is the same as the one that took “10 days”. Same goes for git.

Nevertheless, there's something amazing about being able to release the first version of something so world-changing so quickly.

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