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The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On
JThaddeus writes "An article in TechWorld Australia summarizes the latest opinions on JavaScript from ThoughtWorks: 'There is no end in sight to the rise of JavaScript... "I think JavaScript has been seen as a serious language for the last two or three years; I think now increasingly we're seeing JavaScript as a platform," said Sam Newman, ThoughtWorks' Global Innovation Lead.' The article touches on new additions to JavaScript tools, techniques, and languages built on JavaScript. As the fuller report (PDF) says, 'The ecosystem around JavaScript as a serious application platform continues to evolve. Many interesting new tools for testing, building, and managing dependencies in both server- and client-side JavaScript applications have emerged recently.'"
I've been in the industry a long time. Decades, in fact. I've worked with many different technologies over that time. Some were good, some were bad. I've worked with many different people over that time. Some were good, some were bad.
But when I look back, the worst of the technologies and the worst of the people came bundled together. They're commonly referred to today as "hipsters", and there's been a helluva lot of them involved with software development since around 2006.
Anyone in Silicon Valley, and in the industry in particular, knows exactly who I'm talking about. It's the guy who refuses to take off his fedora hat, even when meeting important clients and customers. It's the girl who wears huge glasses with no lenses and constantly complains about "sexism" without any justification (even the women in HR, who are typically hyper-sensitive to anything that could potentially be perceived as "sexism" think she's full of shit). It's the androgynous "designer" who constantly talks about "obscure" beer or "ironic" music, and who never manages to do anything productive. It's about the failed athlete who also failed out of business school, then flipped through a book on Ruby on Rails once, and now thinks he's a web developer.
These people have systematically destroyed decades of real growth and real productivity. Generally lacking any formal education in computer science, mathematics, physics, or engineering, they don't realize how wrong they're doing software development. They seriously think that JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, and NoSQL are "good technologies". Of course, anyone with any knowledge and experience sees right through this awful charade these hipsters put on.
The software these people produce is total, complete, utter shit. I can't emphasize this enough. I've seen a lot of really bad code in the past, but none of it compares to what these hipsters crank out. It's unmaintainable, it performs horribly, and it's usually written in a shitty dynamic language so it's rife with errors that any compiler would have caught. Just look at the projects that these people have worked on or been heavily involved with. GNOME 3, for instance. Or Windows 8. Or Web 2.0 sites. All of these are totally crap.
Don't misunderstand me, it's not a problem with young software developers in general. I've had the pleasure of working with many who were very talented, and they have a bright future ahead of them. The problem is squarely with those who fall into the "hipster" camp, regardless of age. They are truly a disease upon our industry, the worst I think it has ever experienced. They need to take their ignorance, stupidity, and extremely crappy technologies with them. We would truly be better off without JavaScript, without NoSQL, without Ruby on Rails, and without the hipsters.
Dynamic typing scares him. It scares a lot of people that don't understand how it works or how to use it.
Many people have no problems with Javascript.
Only programmers who cling to their compiler to tell them they did something wrong fear Javascript. I never, ever, have any errors due to an unexpected type, or whatever boogeyman people like @narcc seem to be afraid of.
Or, maybe they are just afraid of Javascript's market share and the possibility that they will have to learn to use it to earn a living someday.