fight the future
According Javascripts creator (Brendan Eich) blog this is the future of JS:
http://developer.mozilla.org/presentations/xtech2006/javascript/
Well if thats the future JS, I'm buying a tardis and staying in the past.
I'm definitely in the camp that would like to have the current bugs fixed but have the core language left well alone.
To explain why I think this way, I should give some background:
I've been a Java programmer (mainly J2EE) for the last 6 odd years and its only recently (triggered by all the ajax hype and being sick of the huge bloated ediface that J2EE has become) that I've taken the time to learn Javascript and discovered what a wonderful little language it is. And I use "little" in a very positive sense, its one of the things that really attracted me to it, unlike much more complex languages like Java or even complex scripting languages (perl, python).
Infact I'm now so firmly on the JS bandwagon using it not only for browser client-side work, but also server side via the brillant Helma Webapp framework/server.
Having now done close to 5 months of solid JS server side development, including almost work on over a dozen small apps (2 already in production use) I really am appreciating the power of using a scripting language to do web development "in the small" as well as the simpliticity and yes,elegance of JS.
Now of course there is no reason why I can't just stick with the current javascript "1" for my server-side coding even if Mozilla and others push ahead with JS2, but one of the other big reasons I like using JS is that I now only need to use 1 language for both server and client side coding (with only the occasional drop into Java for a bugfix or using a 3rd party lib, since Helma is written in Java).
Now the above are all justpersonal reasons for leaving JS as is, but here is a more pragmatic one:
for good or bad, I belive a lot of JS's popularity comes from its small size and simplicity, its an easy language to learn and use, yet is still powerful and flexible enough to handle a amazing variety of tasks.
But its still a scripting language and as such it should not be used where its not the best solution - "programming in the large" is one such place scripting languages do not belong. For that is why we have Java and with Rhino we can have the best of both worlds, using each language for the tasks that suit it best. Making JS2 a 'a Java/Python lite" and trying to get it to work for programming in the large is just not going to work, what you will get is a new language which will no longer be suitable for the quick, simple programming "in the small" tasks that its used for now.
Of course I doubt this little rant and others like it will have any effect on stopping JS2, since it seems that its being strongly pushed by Brendan and alot of the big powers in the web browser world, but you never acheive anything without trying...
http://developer.mozilla.org/presentations/xtech2006/javascript/
Well if thats the future JS, I'm buying a tardis and staying in the past.
I'm definitely in the camp that would like to have the current bugs fixed but have the core language left well alone.
To explain why I think this way, I should give some background:
I've been a Java programmer (mainly J2EE) for the last 6 odd years and its only recently (triggered by all the ajax hype and being sick of the huge bloated ediface that J2EE has become) that I've taken the time to learn Javascript and discovered what a wonderful little language it is. And I use "little" in a very positive sense, its one of the things that really attracted me to it, unlike much more complex languages like Java or even complex scripting languages (perl, python).
Infact I'm now so firmly on the JS bandwagon using it not only for browser client-side work, but also server side via the brillant Helma Webapp framework/server.
Having now done close to 5 months of solid JS server side development, including almost work on over a dozen small apps (2 already in production use) I really am appreciating the power of using a scripting language to do web development "in the small" as well as the simpliticity and yes,
Now of course there is no reason why I can't just stick with the current javascript "1" for my server-side coding even if Mozilla and others push ahead with JS2, but one of the other big reasons I like using JS is that I now only need to use 1 language for both server and client side coding (with only the occasional drop into Java for a bugfix or using a 3rd party lib, since Helma is written in Java).
Now the above are all just
for good or bad, I belive a lot of JS's popularity comes from its small size and simplicity, its an easy language to learn and use, yet is still powerful and flexible enough to handle a amazing variety of tasks.
But its still a scripting language and as such it should not be used where its not the best solution - "programming in the large" is one such place scripting languages do not belong. For that is why we have Java and with Rhino we can have the best of both worlds, using each language for the tasks that suit it best. Making JS2 a 'a Java/Python lite" and trying to get it to work for programming in the large is just not going to work, what you will get is a new language which will no longer be suitable for the quick, simple programming "in the small" tasks that its used for now.
Of course I doubt this little rant and others like it will have any effect on stopping JS2, since it seems that its being strongly pushed by Brendan and alot of the big powers in the web browser world, but you never acheive anything without trying...
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