It is a fortunate historical accident that Eich was infatuated with ultra-dynamic languages like Scheme and Self when he came up with JS. For all its flaws, JS retains enough of their DNA to have given rise to the wonderful world of web apps and, effectively, take over the world. When you consider how many historical accidents went <i>against</i> this style, I think we're lucky to have JS. And it does seem to have been an accident, given how hard Eich has been trying to turn it in to something else (for "serious" programming don't you know).<p>p.s. I've written this here before, but can't track down the link.
An interesting argument.<p>I suspect that js is not yet the world's most popular language but by this link's argument, it may become one of the world's most popular languages.<p>However, as ajax evolves, js may become more of a "virtual machine" into which the initial UI source code is compiled rather than being the raw language in which the UI specified.
JavaScript is not only "not too bad", it is actually great. I wonder if it is even cooler than Lisp, because those hashes that are objects and arrays and everything are so versatile. Sure it would be fairly easy to create a JS style object system in Lisp, but I think it isn't there from the start (only know Scheme, a bit).
js itself isn't so important.<p>already the desktop UI approach (think Java AWT/Swing) is gaining traction, eg GWT.<p>nonetheless, if using js directly, the js itself isn't so important:
* use a good js library with helpful abstractions for DOM traversal, manipulation, etc
* use good js frameworks, eg for compiling data plus templates into html
* use ajax to get html
FYI: Douglas Crockford is a contributor to Yahoo UI Theater. His lectures on js can be found there.<p><a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/" rel="nofollow">http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/</a>
One should read this instead (from the same domain):<p><a href="http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.htm" rel="nofollow">http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.htm</a>
Since when did javascript become a "language"? Is it even Turing complete? I thought the word "script" meant "scripting language" which is NOT the same thing as a full fledged language. If indeed javascript is the most popular "language" then God or Turing help us all.