8 karma · joined November 2, 2018
Java applets came 20 years too early - potentially had the power to do everything we do with the web today but 10x faster and more cleanly.
The web remains one place where you lack the freedom to easily use whatever language you like - WASM will end the era of JS if they do it right.
The JS ecosystem is extremely wild and turbulent - even something as simple as "I need this project to be built exactly as it was in August 2017" is almost impossible with the npm world.
Meanwhile native apps compiled in 1985 still run, and can even build today with minimal fuss.
Lets be honest - how many of you use JS because there was no other option? Its not a terrible language - in fact I like JS/ES7 more than python, but it's still one of the pillars of chaos in the world of programming
Indeed it is "correct" in the sense that it has a very high likelihood (maybe 90% ?) of doing what the programmer intended (Unlike say C or C++ where the probability drops to about 50% for beginners)
However, that is a poor definition of "correct". While it's true that a lot of huge consequences have occurred due to stupid errors like buffer overflows (unintended bug), there are equally disastrous bugs caused by intent - i.e. the programmer had no idea the code could fail.
The biggest challenge to software development is not the "How can I avoid silly mistakes?" but rather "How do I capture this extremely complicated real world semantics in code?" and languages can't really solve that
2002 - First job about 3000$ a year
2005 - Started freelaicing - about 8000$ a year
2018 - About 42000$ a year before taxes
I get paid in INR, even though I contract for a small company in the US, so the inflation eats away the growth - on the other hand, I work from home, and it takes maybe 3 to 4 hours a day (at most) to complete my tasks.
Some weeks go by with hardly anything to do but minor bug fixes and UI tweaks. Great employers, autonomy, interesting work.
In terms of purchasing power I feel very blessed that I make more than an average US citizen, while living in a country where things cost 1/5 compared to the US.
People of my caliber and experience make about 3 times more than me in regular 9 to 7 tech jobs. Very few remain "coders" after more than 10 years in the industry.