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JavaScript and the Netflix User Interface
CowboyRobot writes Alex Liu is a senior UI engineer at Netflix and part of the core team leading the migration of Netflix.com to Node.js. He has an article at ACM's Queue in which he describes how JavaScript is used at Netflix. "With increasingly more application logic being shifted to the browser, developers have begun to push the boundaries of what JavaScript was originally intended for. Entire desktop applications are now being rebuilt entirely in JavaScript—the Google Docs office suite is one example. Such large applications require creative solutions to manage the complexity of loading the required JavaScript files and their dependencies. The problem can be compounded when introducing multivariate A/B testing, a concept that is at the core of the Netflix DNA. Multivariate testing introduces a number of problems that JavaScript cannot handle using native constructs, one of which is the focus of this article: managing conditional dependencies."
..is to not have a backspace ruin everything you just did just because you didn't have the focus you thought you had (Chrome!). And to work offline as good as online. Take email as an example. I really like using travel time to catch up on, reply to and delete email. But often travel time does not have internet access (train, plane). For now, email clients are superior to web email because of this.
It's unfortunate that Javascript has become the embodiment of the Golden Hammer in the programming world. And, just like a hammer made of gold, it doesn't even work that well as a hammer. It is only so widespread because when it comes to the web, it's the only tool you have.
Why the hell are we still stuck using Javascript for the web? Why have we not got some virtual machine (not a language specific one like the JVM), that we can compile any language we like to? Half the world is trying to hack around javascript's shortcomings. If even half that effort was directed at making PNaCl viable on all browsers, we would be so much further forward.
Idiots trying to be cool are still idiots. On the other hand, the content industry is in such a bad shape, that cool idiots may be an improvement.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Browsers should not standardize on a particular programming language, but rather on bytecode. But no one wants to use the other's Bytecode solution ( although we have sever great bytecode standards to choose from ) so we're stuck with Javascript.
Ah Javascript. The language we all love to hate, but isn't going anywhere. It seems like a good portion of all development will be Javascript in the not-too-distant future as legions of low paid programmers take up code writing and maintenance.
Lets stop pretending they are anything close.
Google docs/sheets/whatever is a really crappy imitation of a full fledge office suite ... from 15-20 years ago. It doesn't even compare to Office 95 other than it has online sharing and collaboration, which is great, except thats a tiny subset of what its actually used for.
Just because you can make a half assed, no where near feature complete but looks pretty and does the first 3 things that come to mind look-a-like of an desktop app doesn't mean its a desktop replacement.
There are no desktop applications 'written entirely in javascript' unless you redefine what a desktop application is to fit a narrow subset of what everyone else does.
Learn to use the right tool for the job and stop thinking just because you can make something look-a-like and emulate a few basic functions that it is the same thing. A screwdriver can be used as a hammer, but it makes a shitty hammer. Google docs CAN be used in place of a full fledge office suite, but it makes a shitty office suite when you replace one entirely. Most geeks who use 'office suites' don't actually use office suites, they occasionally type a few pages into a word processor, sure but they don't do the same things as your full time paper pusher.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
And use spaces not tabs.
Why the hell are we still stuck using Javascript for the web? Why have we not got some virtual machine...
asm.js is a subset of javascript that is easily translated to low-level instructions... And runs at near native speed in browsers that optimize asm.js. :) In in practice it might not be "backwards compatible" as speed is a feature.
:)
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that asm.js is a messed up construction... One can think of it as a bytecode encoding in Javascript...
But it works, it's fast, and it's backwards compatible... Though anyone trying to use large asm.js programs in browsers with a poor javascript engine will get an extraordinary poor performance
Anyways, why not? It works
As an old-school back end specialist, I hated the spaghetti runtime error aspect of Javascript -- until I started decoupling various aspects using, for instance, AngularJs. Lack of compile-time checking is an increasing part of even compiled languages like C# (dynamic, reflection), but since AngularJs supplies dependency injection, sanity has returned to the logic that needs to be in the front end. As I've increasingly shifted page loads to Ajax calls, my pages have become sweetly responsive even on slow (mobile) connections, and the turnaround time of a Javascript code change is often simply that of saving a file and refreshing the browser page, compared to starting a new session from scratch on a compiled back end change. It's also no contest on the turnaround of compiled vs Javascript unit tests.
The decoupled nature of AngularJs leads to remarkably few actual moving parts or Hail Mary references ala jQuery. The last logical step is whether or not Ajax calls are to node.js, but since back end Javascript is as testable as anything out there, it comes down to preference and the maturity of the back end framework.
In my copy of Firefox on Xubuntu, backspace does nothing if a text area isn't focused. If I want to go back I can press Alt+Left. When I started typing this post, I didn't know if it's default or if I had previously done what is described on the first result from Google firefox disable backspace. Short answer: put about:config in the location bar, put backspace in the search bar, and change the value of browser.backspace_action to 2 (nothing). Turns out it defaults to 0 (navigate back) on Windows and 2 elsewhere since late 2006.
If you really need client-side processing, do a real piece of software for it.
For which platform shall this "real piece of software" be developed? Windows (desktop), X11/Linux, OS X, Windows Phone, iOS, Android, Windows Store, or something else?
Why do hipster designers insist on dumbing down the entire internet by removing useful features and replacing them with worthless JavaScript pages?