Shlomi Fish wrote: > On Thursday 15 Jul 2010 18:57:53 John Redford wrote: > > Asa Martin wrote: > > Sadly, I cannot recommend a good book on JavaScript, which is a shame > > because JavaScript is one of the best-designed languages ever. Perl is > > actually a pretty good background to learn JavaScript, because it has a > > number of similar features (regexps, closures, dynamic typing) and also has > > a object oriented programming style that is built on minimal language > > support. https://developer.mozilla.org/En/JavaScript -- This is as good as > > it gets. > > > > "JavaScript is one of the best-designed languages ever". You don't appear to > be joking. In order to counter that, I'll link to my newly unveiled "Don't > Abuse JavaScript!" page: > > http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/javascript/ > > I point to many shortcomings of JavaScript there and encourage people not to > extend its use to other realms outside web-browser scripting.
I am indeed not joking. JavaScript is excellently designed for its target purpose. (Those last four words should go without saying, and yet somehow they never do.) I don't think your list is entirely fair or accurate. The things you say JavaScript lacks are not things that you demonstrate are actually necessary. One imagines that people who are using JavaScript are managing to use it without those things. Other things on your list are wrong -- perhaps one should say they're only true about old versions of JavaScript -- or they are purposeful design choices that I'd suggest make sense. Like implicit scoping. Which JavaScript shares with Perl and a number of other languages. No language is the perfect language for everything. But JavaScript is a great scripting language if one wants a language that has plenty of implementations, no political baggage, no weirdly advocating user community, great XML support, and enormous flexibility. It's possible to access more functionality from Java or .NET when it's needed. _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
