On 2011-07-25, at 9:25 AM, Igor Stasenko wrote: > But don't you see a problem: > it evolving from simple 'kiddie' scripting language into a full > fledged system.
First off, JS was done in a hurry, but by Brendan Eich who was hired by Netscape because he had implemented languages before and knew something about what he was doing (and could work fast). JS itself had a marketing requirement to be have C-like syntax (curly braces), but the language itself was influenced more by Self and Lisp than any of the C lineage. And the JS we use today has been evolving (what's wrong with evolving?) since 1995. What is in browsers today was not designed in 10 days, it has been beaten through the wringer of day to day use, standardization processes, and deployment in an extremely wide range of environments. That doesn't make it perfect, and I'm not saying it doesn't have it's warts (it does), but to disparage it as "kiddie scripting" reeks to me of trolling, not discussion. > It is of course a good direction and i welcome it. But how different > our systems would be, if guys who started it 20 years back would think > a bit about future? I don't think we would even be having this discussion if they didn't think about the future, and I think they've spent the intervening years continuing to think about (and implement) the future. > Why all those "emerging" technologies is just reproducing the same > which were available for desktop apps for years? Security, for one. Browsers (and distributed systems generally) are a hostile environment and the ability to run arbitrary code on a user's machine has to be tempered by not allowing rogue code to erase their files or install a virus. In the meantime, desktops have also become distributed systems, and browser technology is migrating into the OS. That's not an accident. > Doesn't it rings a bell that it is something fundamentally wrong with > this technology? Well, I doubt we could name a technology there isn't something fundamentally wrong with. I've been pushing Javascript as far as I could for more than a decade now. Browsers (and JS) really were crap back then, no doubt about it. But they are starting to become a decent foundation in the past couple of years, with more improvements to come. And there is something to be said for a safe language with first-class functions that is available anywhere a web browser can run (and further). Anyhow, not going to spend more time defending JS. Just had to put in my $0.02 CAD. --Dethe _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
