xiphias: (Default)
xiphias ([personal profile] xiphias) wrote2012-02-07 07:59 pm

The more I use JavaScript, the more annoyed at it I get.

I mean, it's not DIFFICULT to use or anything, but it's so awkward. It's . . . inelegant. Things that should be analogous use different syntax, for no apparent reason. The equality operator is "===".

It's like it was designed by independent people at different times who weren't in consultation with each other, and then bodged together at the last minute. I swear, the thing looks like it was designed by, I dunno, MBAs or something. Or maybe planaria. Or maybe even flatworms with MBAs.

[identity profile] aprivatefox.livejournal.com 2012-02-08 02:28 am (UTC)(link)
By the by, if you would like to find the elegant, pretty language hidden inside JavaScript, I recommend the (very thin!) "Javascript: The Good Parts." It's basically one very experienced JS programmer's attempt to point out all the very cool stuff in the language, and also warn you about places where the language lets you do something that's actually not a great idea if you want to write elegant, comprehensible code. There are a lot of those places, as it turns out.

[identity profile] zachkessin.livejournal.com 2012-02-08 09:15 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, that book is very much worth reading.

A large part of Javascript's problems result from the fact that it was designed to do very small things and then evolved into larger things later. And more importantly it was pushed out the door of Mozilla way too soon. Most languages have a period of a few years where the rough edges get filled off, javascript didn't.

As for the equality operator, there are two == and === the problem is that == does some very strange type conversions and can lead to all sorts of strange results in some corner cases.

[identity profile] zachkessin.livejournal.com 2012-02-08 09:17 am (UTC)(link)
The truth is if you want to just have a better syntax check out CoffeeScript, its JavaScript with a better syntax.