0x1C3B00DA
Stuart LangridgeI wish people would stop saying "JavaScript was written in 10 days" with the subtle implication that this is somehow shoddy or half-arsed. GvR wrote the first version of Python in a month in December 1989; the first bit of C was made out of B and NB in a month or two in ~1970. Every single bit of software you've ever used that isn't some enterprise nightmare was first a proof of concept hacked together in a couple of weeks by whoever first did it. This is entirely normal; it's not a bad thing!
Ajinkya Dahale@sil ...so long as it gets proper refinements with time. Lest people keep a proof of concept to rot and move on to the next shiny.
mathew@ajinkyapdahale @sil I think it’s important to refine your design sufficiently before a public release. The real issue with JavaScript is that once all the problems were obvious there was no good way to fix them without breaking thousands of web pages.
Peter Oliver@sil Don't they say designed, rather than written? In any case, I think the interesting part of that story is "... because he thought he was going to be implementing Scheme, but then Marketing said it had to look like Java", and we have to try to imagine a world where we're all Lisp programmers, VSCode is considered a straight-up Emacs rip-off, etc.
Jencel Panic
Sven Slootweg, low-spoons mode ("still kinky and horny anyway")
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial@sil also, with weaponised ADHD hyperfocus, 10 days of work is a *lot* of output.
CartyBoston@sil git is one of my favorite examples, "why can't I understand this thing that Linus pounded out while bored one evening?"
Neal Gompa (ニール・ゴンパ) 
@sil If anything, you should be worried if a totally complete "enterprise-grade" system with all the things emerges in one month. Everything else is normal.
@sil That's usually people who advocate for enterprise nightmares that do that (e.g. Java )
Kevin Karhan 
@sil except #JavaScript is a net negative in my experience as it is only good for 3 things:
making websites #inaccessible to #TextBrowsers, thus #discriminating against #blind users.
Injecting #malware like #Shitcoin #miners for #CryptoJacking.
Tell me i I'm wrong!
#JS #PayOrOkay #Privacy #ITsec #ClownFlare #CloudFlare #Enshittification #bloatware #ads
@kkarhan @sil I do have sufficient data, and you're still wrong. And the kind of rhetoric you're posting here is not without its consequences either: https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture - so I'd suggest putting a bit more thought into those consequences before posting like this.
Speaking of "scientific", there's a reason that proving an absolute negative (eg. "it has no valid usecases besides X") is so hard - because it's usually wrong, as you are required to prove something to the exclusion of everything else that could possibly exist, and you're never going to be aware of all of those possible things. And this should inform the way you speak about topics, if you value a scientific approach.
[…] a net negative in my experience […]
is not clear?
Sorry, but it only takes few things to sour something for people.
- So far I've only seen #JavaScript being used to make sites more #inaccessible, more #bloated, less #privacy-friendly and more obnoxious!
Obviously #JS, alongside #Cookies and #Tracking, are mere tools of #Enshittification but that certainly is as much warranted as the shitstain #Blockchain and #NFTs got due to #CryptoBros using #Shitcoins to #PumpAndDump-#scam #TechIlliterates and #FinanceIlliterates that are "#HornyForMoney!"
- OFC that hurts honest people just like #Shitcoin-Scams hurt #Monero despite being technically incapable to being weaponized for #NFT-Bullshit like #NFTmalware.
Either we say "#Tech is #apolitical!" and accept diverging opinions and experiences to exist as equal
or
We say "#TechIsPolitical!" and ask "Who benefits?" from the rapid onset #Enshittification and purposefully engineered, #PlannedObsolescence due to #Bloatware, regardless if JS or #Windows11 or purposefully bricking support for legacy versions of #iOS.
Kevin Karhan :verified: (@[email protected])
@[email protected] except #JavaScript is a *net negative* in my experience as it is only good for 3 things: - making websites #inaccessible to #TextBrowsers, thus #discriminating against #blind users. - Injecting #malware like #Shitcoin #miners for #CryptoJacking. - Violating #consent of users with #tracking and #adware. Tell me i I'm wrong! #JS #PayOrOkay #Privacy #ITsec #ClownFlare #CloudFlare #Enshittification #bloatware #ads
@kkarhan @sil Tech is political. That doesn't mean that your personal gripes with a language automatically represent a valid political argument. Or that it should be attached to a post that really has nothing to do with any of it.
I regularly talk with people about how a lot of computer technology is designed to benefit capital. But the emphasis here is on 'a lot'. JS is not special here, and it being singled out like this suggests that you're not so much doing political analysis, as trying to prop up personal opinions and feelings with a more scientific or political-sounding rationale after the fact.
If you genuinely want to approach this from a scientific or political perspective, then you should be doing a lot more listening and reading about eg. the history of JS (and computing more broadly, for that matter), and a lot less making bold claims in other people's threads. Understand the background first before arguing about it.
@kkarhan I'm not missing it, I'm choosing not to engage with it. Because it is clear from everything that you have already made up your mind, and you are not willing to reconsider the way you approach the topic.
There's no possible useful outcome from discussing the subject in that situation. The best case is that each of us leaves the discussion annoyed and exhausted because it didn't get anywhere. Accepting that you may be missing something (and reducing the intensity and certainty of your words correspondingly) is a prerequisite for a useful discussion about anything, really.
Inaction FigureThe alternative being… what?
There are so many “JavaScript is bad” posts, and, sure, JavaScript is used to add plenty of undesirable behavior to web pages. But JavaScript is the only way to add ANY behavior that isn’t built into HTML or CSS to a web page.
And, again, sure, a lot of “benign” behavior on the web isn’t STRICTLY necessary.
My point is that JavaScript is a tool, and can be used for good or bad. Please don’t blame JavaScript for the ills of human nature.
@inaction_figure @sil maybe certain things shouldn't be implemented on the web to begin with?
- A lot of what I've seen done with #JavaScript reminds me of that iconic dialogue…
But maybe that's me who just wants to be able to use the #Web and not have my CPU rammed to 100% from a single website!
- #JS being abused that way is just souring it for me…
your scientists were so preoccupied
@inaction_figure not abolished, but at least not forced upon people.
If it wasn’t JS, there would be some other scripting language for web pages.
You could always turn JS off in your browser settings.
But there’s plenty of other shenanigans to be had, like ads & tracking pixels, phishing, etc etc.
The problem, as always, is the people who misuse these tools for their own gain.
“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
@inaction_figure the problem is that #WebDevs and Corporations using #JavaScript these days go out of their way to be assholes and literally brick shit if #JS is disabled.
- And I'm not talking about functionality that should not have been implemented as a website to begin with but rather instead of delivering a #HTML5+#CSS3 site only spit out "This site requires JavaScript!" or some other #lie.
It's like refusing to serve a #cyclist in a drive-in!
That is more a problem with not creating a solution that “degrades gracefully”. Lazy web app development.
I’m not saying there isn’t a problem, but the problem isn’t JavaScript. Well, not all of it.
Ted Mielczarek@sil I believe the original point of the anecdote was to explain some of the weird bits that still exist to this day.
ottO
Daniel Lyons@sil the biggest thing that everyone hates about JavaScript is implicit type conversions. It’s a feature that is so bad that an entirely new language was eventually built to fix it.
Oh and implicit type conversion was added after launch when users demanded it (i.e. not during those 10 days)
@dandylyons @sil I assume you're referring to Typescript, in which case it definitely does not "fix" implicit type conversations. TS is a language that only exists as a pre-compilation language, it doesn't have any runtime characteristics of its own, and therefore just takes on those of its target language (ie. JS). Implicit type conversion is a runtime characteristic, not a syntactic one.
What TS did was (mostly) replacing dynamic with static typing, but that's something very different from removing implicit type conversion. TS code will still happily result in implicit type conversion if the values being handled would trigger it, and it's very easy for this to happen accidentally when eg. handling structured external input, because you can't statically check that at compile time.
If you rely on TS to prevent implicit type conversion, you're going to have a bad time and a lot of weird bugs, is what I'm saying.
(I do agree that the implicit type conversion is a terrible misfeature, for what it's worth.)
@dandylyons @sil Yeah, in that phrasing I would wholly agree 🙂
Flaming Cheeto@sil My parents said my MVP took about 4½ minutes.
Then a couple decades of minor and major revs
Then a couple decades of minor and major revs
Billy O'Neal@sil @whitequark I think it’s that someone sees the comparison truth tables and work backwards to “this was not designed”
jnpn
Daniel Blake@sil I’ve heard that a world was created in seven days.
Tony “Abolish ICE” Arcieri🌹🦀@sil perhaps the larger problem was Microsoft implementing it as a Netscape competitor, which meant early mistakes (like the many implicit coercions which have lead to countless bugs) were quickly solidified with no opportunity to fix them without breaking the Web.
IIRC Brendan Eich claimed Microsoft reached out to him about the coercions, and Eich said it was too late to fix them. However, he later changed his mind and asked Microsoft if they wanted to fix them. "Too late!" replied Microsoft.
Deborah PickettLB 👆 Relatedly, Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day.
stibbons
Kit Bashir
Franchesca@sil it’s not that hard to just make stuff, but management in companies are sold the idea that it’s really hard and dangerous to let your own engineers build stuff, so they pay through the nose for a second rate SaaS solution that does the easy bit poorly, and where their engineers still need to do the hard parts (but now complicated by having to work via the third party thingy).
hyperpape
John Rockefeller