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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

JS programmers today are the PHP programmers of 25 years ago. Remember how many SQL injection bugs there was at the time? Little Bobby Tables remembers.

The standards haven't changed; for the vast majority of JS programmers, this is their first programming language and they have no solid foundation of architecture and security.

So what you get are these overly enthusiastic newbies that want to share their latest achievement with the world (say, a function to left pad a string), and why not include a fancy post-install script with emojis that makes adoption even simpler for other complete noobs? And this is the result.

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I wrote a little PHP about 25 years ago and hated it, dropped it like a rock as soon as it wasn't my job. Before that basic, assembly, c, and c++. Then scheme, C#, Java, prolog, and others too minor to mention before I started using nodejs. My last company I chose full stack Typescript and it was great. There's a lot to love and a plenty to avoid.

You're not wrong that there's a lot of crap, a massive legacy, and some bad behavior. It is also approachable, flexible, and portable. Even if you sometimes need to say "Wat?!?"

And before PHP it was Visual Basic, and COBOL even further back. I'm convinced trying to teach people to program without them understanding the basics of how computers work will lead to this.

It is not about not teaching them, I am co-graduated with many people who do YOLO JS and AI slop right now. They had to pass the same architecture and microprocessor programming lectures.

Educated or not, there are many programmers who simply don't give a fuck. Unless you make all the IT jobs a regulated profession and enforce significant yearly recertification, the mediocres will dominate. You cannot be nice and inclusive to mediocre programmers and expect good baselines.

> Unless you make all the IT jobs a regulated profession and enforce significant yearly recertification, the mediocres will dominate.

This would merely optimise the industry for people who are good at wiggling through bureaucratic hurdles. It would entrench mediocrity while lopping off the extreme ends of the skill distribution - on both ends.

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