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Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of the JS that's been written? If your answer is "Keep writing more JS," then you are on another planet.

Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of the JS that's been written? If your answer is "Keep writing more JS," then you are on another planet. The answer is, "We have fucked ourselves as an ecosystem by permitting a monoculture to flourish, especially one which prides itself on worship of bad languages, bloated runtimes, convoluted abstractions, and general fuckery." Nobody in the last ~20 years has cared about writing Web apps before JS came along. There's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual development time per feature (easily 10x the cost of working in sane languages with sane runtimes), and also in finding trendy hipsters who don't know algorithms or data structures but took four weeks of coding academy classes a couple years ago. And as for Electron, Electron has existed for over three decades (Project Athena launched in 1983) -- if its massive "Nixon throwing the peace signs before getting on the plane" moment hasn't happened by then, sorry, but it's not going to happen. But now? People are making all kinds of great new languages, and more often than not, they don't repeat JS's mistakes. People are excited about programming again -- JS is so bad that it's single-handedly revitalizing interest in languages which two of the largest tech companies in the world are behind, yet couldn't make popular. This is a Big Deal. (You are being parodied mostly for being a Slack developer, not disclosing it up front, and then trying to convince folks that Electron is good, which makes you sound a lot like a pig farmer trying to sell pigs' feet.)

frozenport 9y ago
I know it's a parody but: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/list-of-languages-that-compile-to-js https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/list-of-langu...
cr0sh 9y ago
> like a pig farmer trying to sell pigs' feet Actually - pig's feet are actually a pretty good eatin' portion of the pig. If you've ever had them, you might agree.
devmunchies 9y ago
> Nobody in the last ~20 years has cared about writing Web apps before JS came along. There's basically zero money in it Zero money in web apps? You mean like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitch, Netflix, and YouTube? There's way more money is web apps than desktop apps. hands down. I'm not talking about mobile because this is a convo about electron.
- wvenable 9y ago
  Desktop apps like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop? I too can pick a few ridiculous outliers. Honestly I'm not sure if you're right or wrong but either way that argument isn't good.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    > I too can pick a few ridiculous outliers Those examples aren't event good, though. They all seems to be becoming less popular these days.
    - EduardoBautista 9y ago
      Let me know what web apps are better than the desktop apps that were mentioned. They are just as popular as they have ever been.
      - devmunchies 9y ago
        > They are just as popular as they have ever been This can't be true seeing as Google Docs is used by many companies and students. And "better" may not be the goal of many web apps. They may be trying to measure success by "convenience" rather than being objectively "better".
erikpukinskis 9y ago
You have it exactly backwards. JS succeeded because it's not a monoculture. Within JavaScript there are multiple frameworks, even multiple languages (CoffeeScript, TypeScript, ES6, etc). Win32, Java, MacOS, et al lost because there were such strong standards for doing things the One True Way that competing standards couldn't flourish and the APIs stagnated. In JavaScript, a new framework comes out every year and goes straight at the throat of the old one. The reason there is churn is because these new frameworks are actually solving problems better than the old ones, and because of the LACK of a monoculture developers will actually switch to them. Which in turn is why framework designers are drawn to it, which in turn leads to more new frameworks. Is iOS solving problems better today than they were last year? Or in 2015? Because JavaScript is solving problems way better this year than last.
- wvenable 9y ago
  JavaScript frameworks are ultimately solving problems that the Web/DOM/JavaScript infrastructure created in the first place. The amount of technology required to create a single page application is staggering yet on the desktop that's just "an application". The technology has been around for 20 years and we're just getting to point in JavaScript where we were 20 years ago.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Yes, of course JavaScript has made tradeoffs to get where it is. Those seem like problems in isolation, but look what we got in exchange: - apps from untrusted developers can be run safely - app installs are measured in milliseconds and don't require switching windows - app updates are invisible to the user - beginners can modify apps without leaving the app itself (MySpace profiles, etc) - references deep inside one app can be embedded in another - apps run on nearly every device from one codebase Native app programming can do many things well, but failing on these counts is a deal breaker for many purposes. You act like JavaScript's weaknesses are somehow due to ignorance on our part, but they are tradeoffs made deliberately. And for the most part, the things JavaScript is bad at (high performance graphics, professional ergonomics, etc) are things that are improving. I don't see native apps getting millisecond installs any time soon. It's a classic disruptive technology.

frozenport 9y ago

I know it's a parody but: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/list-of-languages-that-compile-to-js https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/list-of-langu...

cr0sh 9y ago

> like a pig farmer trying to sell pigs' feet Actually - pig's feet are actually a pretty good eatin' portion of the pig. If you've ever had them, you might agree.

devmunchies 9y ago

> Nobody in the last ~20 years has cared about writing Web apps before JS came along. There's basically zero money in it Zero money in web apps? You mean like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitch, Netflix, and YouTube? There's way more money is web apps than desktop apps. hands down. I'm not talking about mobile because this is a convo about electron.

wvenable 9y ago
Desktop apps like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop? I too can pick a few ridiculous outliers. Honestly I'm not sure if you're right or wrong but either way that argument isn't good.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- devmunchies 9y ago
  > I too can pick a few ridiculous outliers Those examples aren't event good, though. They all seems to be becoming less popular these days.
  - EduardoBautista 9y ago
    Let me know what web apps are better than the desktop apps that were mentioned. They are just as popular as they have ever been.
    - devmunchies 9y ago
      > They are just as popular as they have ever been This can't be true seeing as Google Docs is used by many companies and students. And "better" may not be the goal of many web apps. They may be trying to measure success by "convenience" rather than being objectively "better".

erikpukinskis 9y ago

You have it exactly backwards. JS succeeded because it's not a monoculture. Within JavaScript there are multiple frameworks, even multiple languages (CoffeeScript, TypeScript, ES6, etc). Win32, Java, MacOS, et al lost because there were such strong standards for doing things the One True Way that competing standards couldn't flourish and the APIs stagnated. In JavaScript, a new framework comes out every year and goes straight at the throat of the old one. The reason there is churn is because these new frameworks are actually solving problems better than the old ones, and because of the LACK of a monoculture developers will actually switch to them. Which in turn is why framework designers are drawn to it, which in turn leads to more new frameworks. Is iOS solving problems better today than they were last year? Or in 2015? Because JavaScript is solving problems way better this year than last.

wvenable 9y ago
JavaScript frameworks are ultimately solving problems that the Web/DOM/JavaScript infrastructure created in the first place. The amount of technology required to create a single page application is staggering yet on the desktop that's just "an application". The technology has been around for 20 years and we're just getting to point in JavaScript where we were 20 years ago.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Yes, of course JavaScript has made tradeoffs to get where it is. Those seem like problems in isolation, but look what we got in exchange: - apps from untrusted developers can be run safely - app installs are measured in milliseconds and don't require switching windows - app updates are invisible to the user - beginners can modify apps without leaving the app itself (MySpace profiles, etc) - references deep inside one app can be embedded in another - apps run on nearly every device from one codebase Native app programming can do many things well, but failing on these counts is a deal breaker for many purposes. You act like JavaScript's weaknesses are somehow due to ignorance on our part, but they are tradeoffs made deliberately. And for the most part, the things JavaScript is bad at (high performance graphics, professional ergonomics, etc) are things that are improving. I don't see native apps getting millisecond installs any time soon. It's a classic disruptive technology.