Ask HN: Why are we obsessed with javascript? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are we obsessed with javascript?

9 pointspersonjerry25 comments

Everyday I see Yet Another Javascript Framework or another product built in Javascript.

For example, Angular.js, Meteor.js, Backbone.js, Ember.js; Github's Atom editor, the new Breach browser.

What makes Javascript so wildly popular?

I think one reason is that lots of people know it. And if you already know something, you don't have to learn something new.

Sometimes that's bad. For example, someone trying to make a super performant iOS app who only knows JS and refuses to learn Objective-C and C++.

Sometimes it's fine, like a web developer who needs to deliver a business app on all the mobile devices.

I think the fascination with JavaScript is interesting, personally. I don't enjoy the language, but I can't deny that it's easy to pick up for beginners. It has a low barrier to entry, and can, in some cases, encourage people to learn to make things on the computer.

I do find quite a few folks who refuse to look past JS or Node. Honestly, using JS on the server side makes no sense to me, given that Go or Erlang can do concurrent backends better, and other tech can do regular web backends better.

But still, the fact that good JavaScript programmers can bring there talents to the backend does have merit.

We're software developers, charged with solving problems in exchange for money. The tool that does that in the most effective and efficient way is the right tool, right?

I would dispute that it's easy to pick up for beginners. It's easy to START doing then things, and then intricacies you don't understand will kill you. The prototype chain, function call context, closures, asynchronous code, etc.

Type class Dog extends Animal into js2coffee.org and you get this:

    var Dog,
    __hasProp = {}.hasOwnProperty,
    __extends = function(child, parent) { 
      for (var key in parent) { 
        if (__hasProp.call(parent, key)) child[key] = parent[key]; 
      } 
      function ctor() { 
        this.constructor = child; 
      } 
      ctor.prototype = parent.prototype; 
      child.prototype = new ctor(); 
      child.__super__ = parent.prototype; 
      return child; 
  };

  Dog = (function(_super) {
    __extends(Dog, _super);

    function Dog() {
      return Dog.__super__.constructor.apply(this, arguments);
    }

    return Dog;

  })(Animal);

First, I'd argue that none of that would be "beginner" things.

Programmers always seem to forget what it is like to not know how to program. A beginner would never use something like that.

Second, when you bring class-oriented Java-style constructs to JavaScript, it looks ugly because it's not what JavaScript is about. JavaScript is different. It's got a completely different way to do OOP, which you have to learn.

I'll agree that JS has weirdness. But a lot of the things we think are "wierd" are things that seem strange because we've programmed in Java or something else.

Ask someone who started with JS and only learned JS. They don't find those things strange at all.

What you're saying is true for a lot of languages. What you're missing from OP's comment is that it's easy to pick up, which is still true despite your example. Picking up a language doesn't mean much more than getting something done to an ordinary beginner and that's certainly a lot less fleshed out than both my and your standards of picking up a language.

Yeah I remember seeing a post on HN that challenged the user on the behavior of some especially tricky javascript.

I wish it was something about Javascript itself that made it so wildly popular, based on some inherent property that we as a community recognized, isolated,and grew from but unfortunately like many of us have already stated, it's not, it's a people problem. Does anyone see a correlation between a programming community's activity and the perceived controversy of that community? I hope you do because it's a natural development of a large and growing group of people interacting with one another. You'll see it here on the web with large communities, you'll see it at work on some layer of business, and you'll see it outside of your homes. It's not the Javascipt communities size but the amount of people in this field as a whole. As long as you understand building abstractions is our job and leaky abstractions are our job security, you should understand the motivation. Because of it's ability to not only encourage but demand both in short succession, Javascript being the assembly language of the web is big business, a lucrative ecosystem of those building things and those fixing what's broken in a race against... oh yeah, what are we doing this for again?

I can see why industry sold this idea to the general populace, it's economics pure and simple, but the programming community has inadvertently been influenced(bought) by it too. Those ideas are only appropriate for business and barely at that if if you believe in business integrity. This is not appropriate for a community that expects to learn, teach, grow, and influence. We already know what those things that encourage real community and I have this feeling people know where I'm coming from so I hope there's a way we can set things straight again.

I've only been programming for a year now lol so I'm still wrapping my head around this all.. I'm starting to see leaky abstractions everywhere :X but the biggest one of all is us.

"Write once, run anywhere". This is partly, I think, the same reason why Java skyrocketed to popularity in the mid 90's. It gave hope of transcending the boundaries of the operating system.

Java, of course, failed in delivering on this promise. However, nothing has come as close to delivering this as Javascript has. Write once and your code will work on a mac, windows, linux, iPhone, android, and on.

Java succeeded with this on the server-side but failed on the browser and desktop side. I'm not sure how to characterize it on the mobile side -- success in core libraries and basic language but not in the UI.

Javascript has finally gotten reasonable on the browser and ok on the server, but mobile Javascript apps aren't much better than Java was/is on the desktop.

Java succeeded with "run everywhere" on the desktop. A java binary written on a Mac will work in Windows or Linux.

But yeah, Java as a desktop development language per se has had mixed success. Minecraft did okay :o)

That's more of a property of the client side stack rather than inherent of Javascript itself right? If so, do you believe any language could have been in Javascripts spot today as long as it was supported by Netscape client side, even if it were say C++? Also, that doesn't answer the painfully slow adoption of Compile-to-JS languages which would also be written once and run anywhere.

Do you do any type of web development? You don't really have any choice if you do. You can do a lot of things server side, but once the code has left your server, your technology is limited to what the users browser supports.

All browsers I know of support JS(EMACScript), HTML, CSS. They may support other things, but often not all of them do. Javascript itself is a very basic language, and a lot of the build in methods are either not intuitive or are complex in its access and you have know the nuances of the language to work with it.

These frameworks often provide more intuitive access to JS by applying patterns such as MVC on top of JS. You could do this yourself in JS, but why?

I will give your question credit that it does seem like there are a TON of libraries for Javascript and it seems like every day there is a new library promising something in Javascript.

TL;DR: Javascript is the only widely-supported way of coding in a browser.

*ECMAScript. Thankfully nothing to do with Emacs.

Seriously? JS is crap but it's the only option for running stuff on the client on the web. When you're literally the only game in town you don't need to be good. And because it isn't good, people spend a lot of time trying to layer stuff on top of it to make it less obnoxious.

Bingo. It's all about network effects. No other language can overcome Javascript's dominance in the browser ...for now.

It's the ubiquity of the interpreter (every browser), right? You'd be hard-pressed to write anything for the web without JS, and once you're writing in that language, there's a strong pull to use similar libraries/processes/etc. for non-in-browser work.

It's not at all hard to write things for the web without JS, it's just if you need an application to be client-side for whatever reason, JS is necessary. I would guess that most sites over-use Javascript (or, at least, are overly reliant upon it).

I've been wondering the same thing. One of the contributing factors is definitely that everybody already knows it. We've been forced by years of web development to have an understanding of it, so being able to reuse that knowledge in a non-web context makes it interesting.

Additionally, it's virgin ground. Most languages you'd use to build an application in (like java, C++, C#, etc.) have become quite bloated with huge default frameworks that everybody uses. Using JS for anything more advanced than a web page is relatively new, so there is a lot left there to discover and do your own way.

>> What makes Javascript so wildly popular?

Circlejerks.

In all honesty though, I haven't seen anything truly revolutionary outside of the work done on the client (jQuery, Bootstrap, AngularJS).

Every other framework is re-inventing a shittier wheel. IMO, YMMV, get-off-my-lawn.

Make anything that's viewed in a web browser? You have exactly 1 language choice - Javascript. That means that everyone who makes websites needs to use it.

We aren't obsessed with it any more than iOS developers are obsessed with Obj-C.

JavaScript is the language of web browsers. And, the web browser is one of the most used software on the planet.

Write a cool web browser that runs MRuby, Lua, or anything else, and maybe you can reverse this?

It runs everywhere. No other programming language can claim the same, particularly on mobile devices. Hell I can run JS on my fridge(!).

What fridge model? I may buy a new one soon.

It is a Samsung WiFi enabled smart fridge. I don't know the model off hand.

it runs on the browser.

That doesn't explain why apps like Atom are written in JS

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