Building Linux Applications With JavaScript

crankymonkey writes "The GNOME desktop environment could soon gain support for building and extending applications with JavaScript thanks to an experimental new project called Seed. Ars Technica has written a detailed tutorial about Seed with several code examples. The article demonstrates how to make a GTK+ application for Linux with JavaScript and explains how Seed could influence the future of GNOME development. In some ways, it's an evolution of the strategy that was pioneered long ago by GNU with embedded Scheme. Ars Technica concludes: 'The availability of a desktop-wide embeddable scripting language for application extension and plugin writing will enable users to add lots of rich new functionality to the environment. As this technology matures and it becomes more tightly integrated with other language frameworks such as Vala, it could change the way that GNOME programmers approach application development. JavaScript could be used as high-level glue for user interface manipulation and rapid prototyping while Vala or C are used for performance-sensitive tasks.'"

Comments

What about Python?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this already exist with Python? What advantage would there be to using JavaScript over Python? Python is a much cleaner language...

Re:What about Python?

[nurb432]

Same thing, different flavor.

Besides, you know people, they have to keep re-inventing the wheel, in their favorite color.

Its why we never get anywhere.

Re:God no!

[sydneyfong]

Javascript is actually a nice and clean language.

The reason why it has a bad reputation is because of "web developers" writing generally horrible hacks with it. Nothing to do with the language.

Re:Convoluted how?

[Sancho]

Javascript gets a bad rap for a lot of reasons. Most notably is the fact that Javascript and the DOM are conflated in most people's minds, despite the fact that the DOM is not a part of the Javascript specifications--in fact, while Javascript can manipulate the DOM, it's the browser which provides the bindings. It's not Javascript causing the incompatibility, it's the browser. An analogue might be having incompatible implementations of libc--you wouldn't blame the C compiler for the problem, would you?

There's also a developer problem. People see the C-like syntax and start coding as they would in C. Javascript is functional language, and it makes use of that in significant ways. Worse, the expected semantics of block-level scope differ from C, and that's a very big gotcha for a new programmer.

That's not to say that Javascript is without problems. There are numerous quirks which I consider errors in the specification. Nonetheless, it's really quite an elegant language for the most part, and it's certainly possible to develop libraries to handle the quirky cases.

Re:Takes the idea of "open source" to a new level

[AKAImBatman]

Javascript is just one more language, but it's a VERY popular language and a hell of a lot more people know it and use it then C# or GNU-C or anything else.

While the language is VERY popular, I disagree that a "hell of a lot more people know it" than most other GNU languages. The vast majority of coders have no idea how to correctly write Javascript. In fact, you can't even say that Javascript is an Object Oriented, LISP-like functional language on Slashdot (of all places) without ten or twelve people trying to tell you you're wrong.

Which sucks. Because Javascript is an AWESOME language. Plus the modern VMs (as opposed to the last-generation interpreters) are getting quite fast. Fast enough to use JS for anything short of compute-intensive applications. Even professional video games could use it as a scripting language with the right underlying APIs. (See my sig for how far it's come with Web games.)

My hope is that as Javascript shows up in more places, developers will take the time to sit down and truly understand the language. And maybe we can even get a few books on the market that don't suck. ;-)