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Douglas Crockford Envisions A Post-JavaScript World (infoworld.com)
JavaScript developer (and JSON proponent) Douglas Crockford recently described "a theoretical post-JavaScript World," according to InfoWorld. Crockford "believes the web development staple needs a successor that can fix multiple programming nuances." An anonymous reader summarizes their report:
Despite its status as the world's most popular language, Crockford told an audience at the Oracle Code conference, "It would be sad if JavaScript turns out to be the last language." He complained that JavaScript has two different ways of declaring variables -- let and var -- as well as two different "bottom variables" with no value -- both null and undefined. "There's an argument among language designers, should we have bottom values at all? But there's nobody who thinks you should have two of them."
According to InfoWorld, Crockford "also presented a scenario with JavaScript being turned into a purely functional programming language by getting rid of 'impurities' like date, the delete operation, math.random and object.assign. Afterward, he stressed replacing JavaScript rather than adding functional capabilities to it... The next language also should be better able to deal with multiple cores. Most languages have followed the sequential model of Fortran, executing one operation after another, he said. 'That's not how the world works anymore. We now have lots of cores available to us, which all want to be running at the same time.'"
In other news, Crockford also proposed ending the "spaces vs. tabs" debate by simply eliminating tabs altogether.
According to InfoWorld, Crockford "also presented a scenario with JavaScript being turned into a purely functional programming language by getting rid of 'impurities' like date, the delete operation, math.random and object.assign. Afterward, he stressed replacing JavaScript rather than adding functional capabilities to it... The next language also should be better able to deal with multiple cores. Most languages have followed the sequential model of Fortran, executing one operation after another, he said. 'That's not how the world works anymore. We now have lots of cores available to us, which all want to be running at the same time.'"
In other news, Crockford also proposed ending the "spaces vs. tabs" debate by simply eliminating tabs altogether.
You go to hell and you die.
I really don't care which one someone prefers, what I can't stand is not having a standard translation between the two. I wish IDE's, programming languages, and text editors would just pick an arbitrary value like 4 spaces = 1 tab and stick to it. Then, we could let people use whichever they choose.
We need a standardised virtual machine that languages can be compiled to run on
NO!!! What we need is for people stop using scripting to turn web pages into applications when 99.99% of the time I JUST WANT TO READ THE GODDAMNED WORDS ON THE PAGE!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Would you prefer that applications that actually need those features instead be native applications that are specific to an operating system other than the one you use?
Absolutely I prefer it. Native applications provide a much better experience vs. attempting to turn document viewers into general purpose operating systems.
There are a million different solutions to software portability. Our choices are far from shove everything into the browser or going without.
Putting everyone at unnecessary risk in pursuit of the goal of transforming document viewers into operating systems is as foolish as it is counterproductive.
As a dev who primarily works in JS, I'm extremely curious to hear about this! When I talk about limitations of JS, I point out the shortcomings (lack of native 64-bit integer support, or anything other than its singular "number" type is a big one), their workarounds, then conclude by saying it will probably be addressed in the future. The ecmascript standards are very well specified, and compatibility is well mapped out.
Are you talking about node.js by chance? I'm confused about what was "installed" and what options were available. Normally js runs in a browser, and there's not much in the way of options when installing those. Are you talking about the language itself, or the environment such as npm modules?
I like to criticize c# myself, but I think the complaints more accurately pertain to the .net framework.
Please share some details, because I love to know about JS caveats and pitfalls and share them with others. Without this information, they sound like pebkac issues.
Wishing for JS to die out is for wusses. Why not be proactive about killing it off with a better alternative for browser providers to implement? What would you suggest? Samsung has a lot invested in their Tizen OS, and they're not about to abandon that any time soon.