I'm glad to see I'm not alone. JavaScript can indeed invoke bad memories of fragile scripts running in IE5 which are long and awkward due to limitations in browser technology at the time. However, anyone who has used a modern library like jQuery on a support browser will tell you it's very powerful and intuitive while being simple, straightforward and actually fun. Any language capable of supporting this experience is worth seriously considering as an option for us.
- Trevor
Sent from my iPod
On Jul 1, 2009, at 1:44 AM, "Hay (Husky)" huskyr@gmail.com wrote:
Javascript might have gotten a bad name in the past because of 14-year olds who used it to display 'Welcome to my website!' alerts on their Geocities homepage, but it's really unfair. Javascript is a very flexible and dynamic language that can be written very elegantly.
I urge everyone who still think Javascript is a toy language to read Douglas Crockford's excellent article:
http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.html
-- Hay
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Gregory Maxwellgmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 3:50 AM, William Allen Simpsonwilliam.allen.simpson@gmail.com wrote:
Javascript, OMG don't go there.
Don't be so quick to dismiss Javscript. If we were making a scorecard it would likely meet most of the checkboxes:
- Available of reliable battle tested sandboxes (and probably the
only option discussed other than x-in-JVM meeting this criteria)
- Availability of fast execution engines
- Widely known by the existing technical userbase (JS beats the
other options hands down here)
- Already used by many Mediawiki developers
- Doesn't inflate the number of languages used in the operation of
the site
- Possibility of reuse between server-executed and client-executed
(Only JS of the named options meets this criteria)
- Can easily write clear and readable code
- Modern high level language features (dynamic arrays, hash tables,
etc)
There may exist great reasons why another language is a better choice, but JS is far from the first thing that should be eliminated.
Python is a fine language but it fails all the criteria I listed above except the last two.
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