Someone hearts ECMAScript
So I ran across this blog entry with poll wherein someone waxes lyrical about javascript and relatives. Now, I appreciate many of the things he says about javascript, love that he put in a shoutout to the ternary operator, but javascript as a favourite language? That’s going too far! I like javascript as much as the next guy, but it seems kind of like a kludgy language. It gets the job done and let’s you do a ton of really cool stuff but from an aesthetic point of view, I don’t love it.
What do you think? I am a Friend of javascript, since that’s what the poll was asking, but I reserve my love for another. Am I missing something? Is there something beautiful lurking within?
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Yeah, that post came from me spending a morning flipping back between some ActionScript for Flex and some JavaScript for a YUI AJAX app. I realized that it was the first time in a while that I had managed to get literally hundreds of lines of code and more UI done than I would have thought possible … and yet I didn’t feel like I had to brute force my way through the language.
I spent the earlier part of the week coding a standalone app in Delphi, and some Java classes to work around limitations in ColdFusion. And as I thought back on how comparatively little I had accomplished in those languages, I realized it was because coding with them was like a series of prayers and mantras delivered while kneeling at church. Yeah, I get the bulletproof feeling that I’ve written something indestructible … but I also feel exhausted from the effort.
Sure, coding in JavaScript feels more like baking cupcakes than an entire Thanksgiving dinner. It’s simple, fast to do, and comfortable. But! Given the right back-end (such as Flex or YUI), you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. The simplicity belies the functionality.
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Heh! I haven’t spent much time with YUI - started playing around with jQuery and like it a bunch. Javascript is definitely growing on me as I work with it more, but as a language it still seems a little ugly. I find myself gritting my teeth on occasion as I do something. But I persevere and who knows, perhaps once I’m fluent in it, things will seem more natural and correct to me.