On Monday 19 Jul 2010 07:23:29 John Redford wrote:
> Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > On Thursday 15 Jul 2010 18:57:53 John Redford wrote:
> > > Asa Martin wrote:
> > > Sadly, I cannot recommend a good book on JavaScript, which is a shame
> > > because JavaScript is one of the best-designed languages ever. Perl is
> > > actually a pretty good background to learn JavaScript, because it has a
> > > number of similar features (regexps, closures, dynamic typing) and also
>
> has
>
> > > a object oriented programming style that is built on minimal language
> > > support. https://developer.mozilla.org/En/JavaScript -- This is as
> > > good
>
> as
>
> > > it gets.
> >
> > "JavaScript is one of the best-designed languages ever". You don't appear
>
> to
>
> > be joking. In order to counter that, I'll link to my newly unveiled
> > "Don't Abuse JavaScript!" page:
> >
> > http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/javascript/
> >
> > I point to many shortcomings of JavaScript there and encourage people not
>
> to
>
> > extend its use to other realms outside web-browser scripting.
>
> I am indeed not joking. JavaScript is excellently designed for its target
> purpose. (Those last four words should go without saying, and yet somehow
> they never do.)
No, it's not.
>
> I don't think your list is entirely fair or accurate. The things you say
> JavaScript lacks are not things that you demonstrate are actually
> necessary.
* I've ran into a need to use either sprintf or date-formatting routines. I
had to resort to using a high-level API that emulated them.
* I've been bitten by JavaScript's implicit statements' ending upon newlines
at least once.
* I'm constantly annoyed by its implicit scoping.
> One imagines that people who are using JavaScript are managing
> to use it without those things.
Yes, they are - with great difficulty or while using third party libraries
such as jQuery.
> Other things on your list are wrong --
> perhaps one should say they're only true about old versions of JavaScript
> -- or they are purposeful design choices that I'd suggest make sense.
Like what?
> Like implicit scoping. Which JavaScript shares with Perl and a number of
> other languages.
Perl with use strict does not have implicit scoping. You need to declare every
variable. And I noticed that the semantics of implicit scoping of JavaScript
are much worse than Ruby's (which I also dislike and has bitten me one more
time) for example.
>
> No language is the perfect language for everything. But JavaScript is a
> great scripting language if one wants a language that has plenty of
> implementations,
Often incompatible and buggy.
> no political baggage, no weirdly advocating user
> community, great XML support, and enormous flexibility. It's possible to
> access more functionality from Java or .NET when it's needed.
How are Java or .NET related to this?
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
Parody on "The Fountainhead" - http://shlom.in/towtf
God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
decided against it because he thought it would be too evil.
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