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Re:JavaScript right on the hardware by eob on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @07:09PM (#6215040)
As someone who has come around to Javascript after many years avoiding it, I think I can answer you: people like Javascript for a similar reason to why people like Python. As long as you stick to a strict set of conventions, Javascript is a very compact and manageable language, with a bit of extra flexibility to spice things up due to its prototypal nature.

With Python, you don't have to worry about the conventions part, since there is one "Pythonic" way to do everything. But at least with JS there are only a few different standard ways to implement, for example, OOP. So once you've gotten used to it, when you read someone's code, you can quickly notice what style they use and contribute your code to match it.

My biggest remaining gripe with Javascript is the lack of a good base set of libraries for container and string manipulation. Sure there are packages (like Underscore) you can use, but it would be nice to have them as a standard part of JS.

Re:JavaScript right on the hardware by nakkiel on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @07:32PM (#6215175)
Same same. Though I'm happy with having a lot of stuff out of the stdlib because we know where that kind of things leads. As long as performance is good enough, that probably won't be a problem and discoverability is still ok (agreed the ecosystem not yet too vast although we're getting there). My gripe is with all the unfinished stuff in just about any javascript library out there.
Re:JavaScript right on the hardware by alexhutcheson on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @11:50PM (#6216051)
Any chance you could point out a couple of good resources that cover the "strict set of conventions" you mention for Javascript? I've been dabbling in Javascript projects for a while now, and one of my biggest frustrations has been that I haven't been able to find any great resources that cover best-practice code design (above the level of style guides that cover mainly syntax issues). It would be great to have a couple of resources that cover the "right way" of doing things.
Re:JavaScript right on the hardware by Tichy on Thursday August 15, 2013 @06:16AM (#6216982)
I think most frameworks for JS are opinionated, I mean things like jQuery, Sencha, AngularJS, emberJS, or also various server side frameworks.

Once you specialize on using one of them, you'll probably adopt their conventions.

I myself haven't settled yet, too my own dismay. It's not easy.