Re:Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript
by arghwhat on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @05:49AM
(#17301658)
I wrote crypto algorithms and protocols, compression algorithms, browser engine sandboxes and similar in JS professionally for 5 years (don't ask why), and often had to deal with fun things like mis-compilations from JS engines and other fun bugs. I'd argue that I have quite extensive knowledge of JS, far beyond the average JS programmer (but far from the highest of experts, of course).
JS's only unique, redeeming quality is its availability through the deployment of web browsers, and the benefits that come with such widespread use. JS wins marketshare because it has marketshare. Any language could have taken JS's place, and most would have been better. WebAssembly, when DOM integration and others become a thing, might allow us to throw JS off its throne.
JS doesn't have advantages on its own to make of for its disadvantages, and relies heavily on extremely advanced JITs to make it borderline acceptable. The language itself still has very clear signs of having been designed on the back of a used napkin (its number type, its "array of int16's" string, "this", "prototype", ...).
I would like to acknowledge that ES2016 brought some things that did remove some retarded areas of JS (like arrow functions, which do not have its own "this" context, unlike the old function expression, class definitions that can briefly make you forget the terrible underlying "prototype" madness, and ways to access proper unicode code points in strings), but we are very far away from having actual advantages here.
JS's only unique, redeeming quality is its availability through the deployment of web browsers, and the benefits that come with such widespread use. JS wins marketshare because it has marketshare. Any language could have taken JS's place, and most would have been better. WebAssembly, when DOM integration and others become a thing, might allow us to throw JS off its throne.
JS doesn't have advantages on its own to make of for its disadvantages, and relies heavily on extremely advanced JITs to make it borderline acceptable. The language itself still has very clear signs of having been designed on the back of a used napkin (its number type, its "array of int16's" string, "this", "prototype", ...).
I would like to acknowledge that ES2016 brought some things that did remove some retarded areas of JS (like arrow functions, which do not have its own "this" context, unlike the old function expression, class definitions that can briefly make you forget the terrible underlying "prototype" madness, and ways to access proper unicode code points in strings), but we are very far away from having actual advantages here.