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Comment by jnbiche | Hacker News Reader

I lean toward languages with static typing for application development, but now that there is ES6 and typed arrays, JavaScript is a pretty nice language to program in. And there are a number of very powerful APIs available to browser JS that many people still aren't aware of/don't use to their full potential: WebRTC, Web Audio, WebGL, Transferable Objects in Web Workers, and so forth.

I've now stopped using jQuery for DOM manipulations, and use plain JavaScript in most cases involving simple manipulations (I do use React for complex applications).

CSS has some problems that grid and Flexbox should help alleviate.

But all in all, I'd say the Web is in a pretty good state.

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I agree. As a C++ developer of ten years (before switching two years back), trust me when I say: JavaScript is not a bad language at all. Six years ago I used to laugh at the language. It has come a long way since then (or I've learned more). So much so, it is now my favorite language.

As a side note: do try to not convert JavaScript into a static language -- there are certain types of boilerplate/generated code that I could never eliminate with C++ due to static typing. With JS, it was a breeze.

Unsurprisingly, from the point of view of a C++ programmer, JS doesn't look bad at all.

That's not generally true. Another C++ dev here. I wish Dart had more success... If I were forced today (to do front-end) at least it should be TypeScript.

Until we can write truly robust versions of everyday productivity applications, such as editors or spreadsheets, without resorting to <canvas> underlayment, it simply isn't true that the web is in a good state. Flexbox improves the layout situation (as present CSS is astonishingly terrible at simple layout), but it won't elevate to anywhere near the point of making aforementioned productivity applications.

>> But all in all, I'd say the Web is in a pretty good state.

Agreed.

Not sure why people are always trying to fix something which isn't broke.

Ok, yeah, we could fix some things, when you start to micro manage all the tools and technologies people use to build things these days for the interwebs. But seriously, is it really that bad?

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