Is The Death Of JavaScript Upon Us, Or Is A Transformation Underway?

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/the-future-of-javascript/

by philco • 13 years ago

41 15 13 years ago

"Startups identify with JavaScript. When you’re just starting out, you need to be dynamic. You need to be flexible. You need to be able to bust out a prototype that just works, and you need to be able to change it on a dime without recompiling your code. JavaScript was once the startup of the browser wars, and it crushed Java and Flash for the same reasons that startups have the ability to disrupt markets and displace the established players: agility and flexibility."

What nonsense.

1) " When you’re just starting out, you need to be dynamic. You need to be flexible. You need to be able to bust out a prototype that just works, and you need to be able to change it on a dime without recompiling your code."

Unlike Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, any of the Lisps, Lua, etc.? The real reasons js is interesting on the server side is code sharing and node's (flawed) concurrency story.

2) "JavaScript was once the startup of the browser wars, and it crushed Java and Flash for the same reasons that startups have the ability to disrupt markets and displace the established players: agility and flexibility."

Comparing apples to oranges. Also, the term "browser wars" means browser vs. browser, not embedded scripting language vs. plugins.

ender7• 13 years ago

Does the title of this article propose a false dichotomy between two equally unlikely outcomes, or was that a giant waste of 15 paragraphs of my time?

Look, JS is a lovely language, and it's fun to write things in Node. However, no one thinks that JS is going to become a "universal language", even though all the cool kids are writing the next great todo list web app using Node-powered hyper asteroids. Nor will Javascript "die out" for reasons that should be obvious to anyone. Some people will write backends in Node, but most people will write them via one of the other myriad backend languages available. Huzzah! Choices in backend development. Rejoice!

beatgammit• 13 years ago

I didn't read anything new there, except maybe the mention of ASM.js.

JS is a fine language, but I've run into problems where I wished I had just a little more structure. I've started to turn to Dart, and I hope it catches on. My servers are usually in Go because that's what it was designed for.

So to answer your question, I think it was a giant wast of 15 paragraphs. No new information, no new analysis, just the same old complaining.

nickporter• 13 years ago

> ...giant waste of 15 paragraphs of my time?

Pretty much.

sek• 13 years ago

Flexibility is not the opposite of scalability. Maybe he means writing hacks, but then you have problems after 200 of code already. If he means dynamic typing and lambdas, that doesn't prevent Python from being scalable. Startup or big corp.

The equivalent of Typescript is Google Closure not Dart. Dart could kill JavaScript one day, but that doesn't seem to be the topic here.

What does the author try to communicate here?

jasonlingx• 13 years ago

>When it comes to demanding multimedia applications, companies still turn to Flash for performance.

Huh?

banachtarski• 13 years ago

Games. HTML5 + js still loses to AS3/Flash

chipsy• 13 years ago

A bad article with a wonderful writing prompt.

We've long passed the point where JS is considered foundational technology, with near-universal adoption. It's hard to understate what that level of standardization can do for the whole software ecosystem, since - in tandem with the push for better browsers - it's allowing a whole new round of innovation to take place.

angersock• 13 years ago

I really hate to expose my naivete by asking this but its mention in the article forces my hand: Who the hell is writing web apps with millions of lines of JS?

krapp• 13 years ago

I assume they're theoretically counting node.js backend stuff. At least I hope so.

AlexDanger• 13 years ago

I love language wars. It makes it very easy to identify people you dont want to work with.

pella• 13 years ago

#Mloc.js 2013 videos/presentations

http://mloc-js.com/#videos

for example:

Douglas Crockford (PayPal) : Syntaxation

Michael Ficarra (Groupon) : Redesign of CoffeeScript

boomlinde• 13 years ago

The article seems to assume that the limitations of javascript is something inherent to dynamic language. It reads like the author has no real experience outside web development.

For all we know, the only reason JavaScript "excels at being the glue of the web" is that it's the only widely supported client side scripting language for browsers.

opinali• 13 years ago

"ASM.js, a subset of JavaScript that runs extremely fast on modern browsers without modification" -- NOT TRUE. The author implies (either purposefully or accidentally) that ANY "modern browser" will run asm.js fast, or in other words, current advanced JS VMs don't need modifications to effectively support asm.js. If you believe that, just look here: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/b3d85...

michaelwww• 13 years ago

I had this eerie feeling that I was reading Thomas Friedman -- a lot of hand waving with little substance.

Is The Death Of JavaScript Upon Us, Or Is A Transformation Underway?

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