JavaScript Itself as a Worthy topic (always has been)

[Brad Jesness]

Browsers have been bad, but JavaScript (in my view) has never been bad (except the bad parts in the Appendix of Crockford's tiny book, JS: The Good Parts).  There has always been a LOT of good stuff on using JavaScript in great ways.  Harmony will just add to that. 

 

But, I disagree about JS, itself, being a problem.

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Danny Patterson <dpatt...@sevenventures.net> wrote:

I’ve been hoping that JavaScript would grow up for nearly ten years now.  But when ECMAScript 4 was killed, Microsoft and its friends made it clear that they weren’t interested in letting that happen.  So the community had to do what it could and we’re left with a ton of frameworks that try to mask the problems with all the browser DOMs and JavaScript.  The world would be a better place with ECMAScript 4, so I too am hoping for ECMAScript Harmony.  HTML and CSS have gotten their upgrades, it’s about time JavaScript got some love.

 

Danny

 

 

From: javasc...@googlegroups.com [mailto:javasc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brad Jesness
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2012 10:51 AM
To: javasc...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Any Local Sencha Users?

 

Holy crap, not yet another library or framework!! ???  It is my hope that as the new version
of JavaScript (Harmony) (with its many new aspects) approaches, that we can have
the basic raw javascript as a topic.  NO offense.

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Chris Schumann <chris.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

My new project is using Sencha, and we could use some help setting up stores and getting things rolling.

Are there any local folks we could buy lunch for and talk to about getting started?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Marc Grabanski]

Good you broke this into a separate topic.

Atwood's law:

Anything that can be written in JavaScript will be written in JavaScript.

;) 

--
Marc Grabanski

Talent Evangelist & UI/UX Developer

MJG International

[Brad Jesness]

Yes.  And, I will continue on this topic

 

It is a JavaScript group.  So much talk about libraries all the time is not necessary when there is so much good to talk about with Javascript per se.   JS is GOOD. Browsers have been bad, but JavaScript (in my view) has never been bad (except the bad parts in the Appendix of Crockford's tiny book, JS: The Good Parts).  There has always been a LOT of good stuff on using JavaScript in great ways. ( Harmony will just add to that. )
 
There are many great topics about features of JS and using them and doing JS well.  I have never
seen grievous deficiencies.  Yet we never have these topics.  Just always speeding things up for games, it seems like.  I do not even like games.

[Marc Grabanski]

Brad,

The reason libraries and frameworks are much more interesting to discuss is that they usually address topics met on the job. Langauge discussions are typically more theoretical and don't apply to a specific situation. People love to see demos of what a framework / library can do rather than what JavaScript itself can do because not everyone enjoys looking at inheritance structures / design patterns versus something the browser can now do in the UI thanks to a library / framework.

[Brad Jesness]

Marc,
While what you say is certainly sometimes true, there are routines and inheritance stuff  to learn about that have a lot of general applicability and are good to learn about for doing MANY types of programs efficiently and in a way that allows build-on.

Brad

[Brad Jesness]

P.S. 95% of the programs (full JS apps) I was inspired to write use NO frameworks or big libraries
(just tiny libraries to make up for browser differences and utilities -- of the sort you could build yourself).
JS libraries and frameworks inspire little more.

[Marc Grabanski]

Oh, I agree! I look at and play with different design patterns all the time...just look at Alex Sexton, Thomas Fuchs, Dustin Diaz or Addy Osmati's work in these areas. I'm just saying that it just typically isn't the case for JavaScript devs care about architecture decisions since most came from a design or HTML/CSS background. Increasingly server-side devs are moving to the client though so that is why frameworks like backbone.js are getting a lot of attention as of late.. and even in that case backbone.js is doing very little on top of plain JavaScript objects but yet the framework provides context in which to talk about JavaScript architecture / code organization.

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Brad Jesness <bjes...@gmail.com> wrote: