Slashdot Mirror
JavaScript Inventor Speaks Out
Anonymous Coward writes "Brendan, on his mozillazine blog talks about JavaScript 1, 2, and in between in light of DHTML and AJAX. In an informal blog entry he answers frequently asked questions such as fixing Unicode in regular expressions, multi-threading, weak numeric typing, and obfuscating code."
It's a pity JavaScript rarely gets the attention it deserves as a legitimate programming language. Most guides to C begin with teaching you how compilers work; most guides to JavaScript teach you how to swap some images.
This is unfortunate as it's quite powerful: it supports first-class functions and an excellent generic object-system, not to mention the usual suspects such as dynamic memory management.
Hopefully its apparent resurgence these days (as browser vendors get their compatibility acts together) will change this.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
The difference between the Javascript language and the browser objects themselves has become more and more clear to me as I've worked heavily with both more complex Javascript like AJAX (where you aren't spending much time directly interacting with browser objects, but rather staying "inside" Javascript), working with JScript.NET for commandline programs, JScript in WSH and HTA as well as Photoshop scripting.
.NET assemblies etc.)
Many of the things that bother me about "Javascript" turn out to be problems with IE or Mozilla's objects and not the language itself. Don't get me wrong, things like the Javascript date objects still bug me, but I'm growing to like the language itself much more than I used to.
If you've only ever used Javascript in a browser, you may not realize that much of what you're working with is really the browser's object model. All of the window., document., document.form, etc. interaction form.submit(), etc. are all browser object properties and methods.
I noticed before posting some questions about scripting outside the browser. In those environments, you just get a different set of objects instead of document.form, you get objects for the filesystem or an active image, just like in any other programming language that uses objects from outside (COM objects,
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I'd rather use a browser configured to show me the world wide web as a bunch of hypertext documents, not as a bloated adware-infested and spyware-infested application that moves crap around inside the browser window and pops up windows.
Yes, but this is a discussion about JavaScript, not Flash.
Honestly. Why should you be able to? Amazon SELLS books. It's not an on-line library. That's not the service they are offering.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Try this site to see what I mean.
http://www.masswerk.at/jsuix/
As someone who'd only used Javascript in creating DHTML, I'd worked up a good hate against it. But what I'd hated was really the ridiculously incompatible implementations of the DOM in IE/Netscape. I also hated the embedded space itself--shitty delivery method (encoded or called from HTML, no #include, no namespaces).
Then I started writing extensions for firefox. I'm trying to show my company that (firefox + xul + js) > (ie + activex). I'm mostly successful, since we already have lots of XML over HTTP data services primed for XmlHttpRequest.
But it turns out that the language doesn't suck so bad. Sure the namespace problem is JS's fault, but the rest is the embedding. Using JS for firefox exntensions allows you to code to one platform; make more OO libraries, etc. I even generate classes from the DTDs I make the XML services from.
Who would've thunk it's really a decent language in the dynamic, lambda-toting, functional-ish area?
It's also responsible for Google Maps. That's the only big one that jumps out at me, but there are a few other uses I've seen, that I've liked. Try out greasemonkey, and make javascript work for you.
I mostly agree, but we do need Javascript. If you look at the Strict XHTML spec, there is no target="" attribute allowed on anchor tags. So if you want to open a link in a new browser, the official way to do it requires client-script (something about targetting is a browser behavior not a document structure semantic, so it should be script, not html):
<a href="http://www.slashdot.org" onclick="window.open(this.href,'_blank');return false;">Slashdot</a>
So you can argue that XHTML blows, or that you shouldn't open links in a new window, but if you decide you want to be standards compliant, you are going to need some client script. This is not the only example.
-David
Javascript is a scripting language that can be plugged into anything that has a script host for it. Dont confuse javascript with the DHTML DOM. Plenty of javascript code is perfectly valid and does not run inside a browser:
- Windows Scripting Host allows you to write shell scripts in many languages (Javascript, Perl, VBScript) You can install new script engines and it will host those languages as well. WSH gives you a object model to access the disk and other windows components. (COM, ActiveX, etc).
- Classic ASP used the Windows Script Host javascript engine so that js can be the language for ASP. (instead of the default of vbscript). Again, you could use any language that a script engine was installed for, including PERL. (see ActivePerl).
- I also believe some cgi scripts can be written in javascript.
Just because you aren't accessing the DHTML DOM objects (document, location, windows, etc) doesn't mean you aren't coding javascript!
-David
Finally somebody who isn't a total dickhead speaks up on the Ajax craze.
..."
"With DHTML and AJAX hot (or hot again; we've been here before, and I don't like either acronym)
Bingo!
The man's right on.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca