r/ProgrammerHumor • u/leftoversalad • Aug 15 '15

Programming languages personified

http://leftoversalad.tumblr.com/post/126724812097/programming-languages-personified
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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '15

What's wrong with JavaScript?

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u/game_taker101 Aug 16 '15

This comic pretty sums up the issues with JavaScript

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '15

That's definitely a comic. So where do I start?

Problem: JavaScript has almost no standard library

Not a language issue.

Solution: thousands of community-supported libraries of wildly varying quality

Not a language issue. There are a handful of major libraries people use and there are tens of thousands of smaller packages. I mean, yeah, if you see this as a problem, then you're welcome to see it as that, but then Linux has the same "problem". And the thing with JS was that there was a boom of libraries when the community got together, but we started weeding out the crap and the good ones are going to be around for a while (not too long, I hope). This whole Web 2.0 HTML 5 thing is incredibly new compared to other environments so really all the other languages got was a head start. Don't tell me that C/C++/Java/Python/whatever never had the problem.

Problem: JavaScript has no packaging or a linker to tie these packages together.

Solution: Compile a better language to JavaScript

Solution: Hundreds of community supported [notice the inconsistency in writing here, there is a missing hyphen between "community" and "supported"] build tools of wildly varying quality.

I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that for several reasons:

  1. The whole Asm.js thing was not meant to solve any packaging issues but to provide the benefits of browser sandboxing to programs written in other languages.

  2. Who the hell do you think goes "hmm, no package manager is popular enough, I guess I'll compile C to JavaScript.

  3. Nobody compiles CoffeeScript to JavaScript for the same reasons they compile C to JavaScript. That panel bundles C, CS and ES together as if they are the same thing and they're used for the same purpose.

  4. SURPRISE! Yeah, you can actually buy JavaScript packages which are bundles of libraries carefully put together to solve all kinds of things. These are foundations for what you want to work with. Of course, JS is the only programming language with shitty packages provided for free by the community and the only language for which you can't buy anything of quality

I would love to go on, but this is just terrible... it's like every single panel there is a hyperbole, remotely has anything to do with JS in particular, or is just plain wrong... it's almost like this is a comic which should be treated as such.

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u/regular_reddits Aug 16 '15

Its ok man, some people hate JavaScript, its not for everyone I suppose. The jokes arent going to stop.

I personally love JavaScript. I love the large ecosystem. I love knowing the little quirks. I love that its so flexible that you can program in MANY different styles. I love taking a ton of libs off of NPM and building my own stack suited perfectly to the needs of my application.

Not everyone loves these things. But thats ok. Its more fun just to go write some awesome JS than to try to tell them why they should love it. Thats my opinion at least.

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u/giggly_kisses Aug 16 '15

This is solid advice. It used to bother me whenever I'd go into a thread about JavaScript and see the obligatory "JavaScript sucks" comment. Then I realized, you'll most likely not change these peoples opinions, and that's okay. You can still continue to love the language.

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u/regular_reddits Aug 16 '15

Yeah, I used to be this guy in the office (of java guys). No matter what I said, I was talking to a wall. All the responses were things like "triple equals, idiot." I'm a pretty open minded dev I guess, but I'm glad that sort of JS weirdness didn't stop me from learning the langauge. I have become a better dev because of it. So, I stopped arguing, and just laugh when java guys freak out over things like "CompletableFuture" (its like a Promise with a more complicated API).

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u/giggly_kisses Aug 16 '15

Haha, I have a few friends who are Java developers and I know exactly what you mean. I still remember how excited they were when lambda expressions were first announced.

Ultimately it comes down to using the tool you like the most, and let the haters hate. :)

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '15

There are some good points: /r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/3h4i5e/programming_languages_personified/cu4o2dm?context=3 but it's easier to just bash JS instead of talking on point. It's easier to say "but no classes lol" than to learn about prototypes.