Perl never had a monopoly on a runtime environment with an install base of pretty much everyone who owns a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Sometimes it's not about engineering principles.<p>If native mobile apps end up de facto replacing the open internet, that could change, of course. But I hope the internet remains, warts and all. And as ARM chips improve, and DOM APIs are expanded, and JS engines become more efficient, and the HTTP spec is ever more optimized for web applications, I think in the end the browser will survive.
> we still haven’t seen our “Java of the browser”<p>Haven't we?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_applet" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_applet</a>
> Still, you don’t see that many big Python and Ruby shops either...<p>But we keep seeing a lot of PHP shops. Does this mean that PHP is better suited for "large scale projects?" I'd very much doubt that.<p>The ease of learning a language and it's availability are very important factors in the popularity of a language. Javascript scores well in this regard. Really, I am not too worried about Javascript's impending doom. Unlike Perl, it continues to remain a favorite "target language" making it further entrenched in most ecosystems.
Already posted 3 times before to HN this year:<p>- <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016848" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016848</a><p>- <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5014218" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5014218</a><p>- <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5020893" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5020893</a><p>NB. Only the first post has comments.
Javascript is fairly new, Perl hass been around for ages. So there is a lot of old code knocking about that was written quickly and by people who quite frankly did not know what they were doing. Perl5 is actually extremely readable and if you are any where near a decent developer you will understand it. I have worked in loads of companies and bad code is bad code no matter the language. I have have seen some Java code that made me want to give up development for good, and don't get me started on legacy browser javascript code.
Sounds to me like the classic apples and oranges comparison.<p>In my opinion Javascript's evolution has become a requirement more than just a story of success. It was the de facto standard language for browsers but with big lacks of performances. Browsers vendors worked to improve it and everything was only a natural consequence of the evolution of the World Wide Web.<p>Perl's history is completely different. Perl has always worked behind the scenes, and still does it greatly. It has a stable, rock solid, very performant and widely spread runtime.<p>Let's just call things with their names and use them for the purpose they are born and everything will look less confusing.<p>More than else, always remember: You can write FORTRAN in any Language.
> JavaScript just waiting for the next technology to come around and make it look like Perl does today: pervasive, but lacking enterprise adoption on large applications.<p>How about CoffeeScript?<p>Also, I worked on some pretty "big" JS projects (in terms of scale, not popularity) and I found Javascript really easy to maintain, you just have to plan ahead a little, but I do agree that the syntax is a slightly bit not to my liking, but it is not horrible.<p>Also, what type inconstancy is he referring to?
I don't see how Java's idea of type safety is particularly useful for anything, its type system is almost entirely useless.<p>I've yet to see compelling arguments for why it might be better in "large" projects.
These subtle JS rants every other day are kind of annoying. Comparing JS to Perl gives a new but still wrong angel on an old tedious discussion.<p>JS weaknesses are overrated: anybody can grasp all quirks within an hour and after few days you get used to them (besides there just a few and great standard libs like underscore making JS a rock-solid base) and JS' bad parts won't stand in your way anymore. Those who aim for perfection won't get shit done anyway. They look for the academically structured Rails apps (or replace with any other bloated framework) with half a second respond times and breaking after every 0.0.1 update of Rails. In my view JS is damn perfect and I can think of anything better right now. JS and its ecosystem (especially the awesome npm) gives you anything to write elegant, well maintainable code bases ten leagues higher than any script language like PHP and on the same level like Ruby or Python.<p>JS is not a hack written in ten days. JS is a wonderful and modern language, more innovative than most other language out there, it's a masterpiece of a language. People complain because it's different: it doesn't follow the traditional OO, there're no strict monolithic frameworks which teach them how to structure code and most are just overwhelmed with functional programming and event loops/call backs/asynchrony because they were just used to something different. This is not being arrogant it's just that people don't like change or hoping all the time for something better instead of being happy with what they have now.<p>You can create and maintain very large code bases in JS without any Coffee or other layers of abstraction (there enough examples out there). Most people are just not used anymore to think theirself about structuring code since there was always somebody who did the job for them (Rails, Django, etc.).<p>You don't need to compile to JS -- JS is also not the new assembly of the net because hundreds are building weird languages on top providing useless syntactic sugar and again old-age OO, it's already a very high level language allowing you to do ANYTHING and structuring you code exactly as want. Nothing will stand in your way.<p>And Javascript is so fast, you get C class performance with a dynamically typed language. No need to compile after every single change or deploys are fast and easy without sending huge binaries to the servers. There's no other language providing this speed for such little cost, no other.<p>To understand JS' beauty and to get the "flow" you have with other languages and you do not get with JS you have to do two things: invest time and try to forget what you learned. And if you still don't get there spend more time with JS. It's not JS which failed.<p>JS haters and other downvoters: not agreeing != downvoting
Mh... "those who hate Perl hate it because it’s “too hard to maintain” and too “strange.”"... No.. i hate perl because it's too easy to write really, really bad code and non-obvious how to write good code.
Using any technology in hopelessly idiotic ways when better tools (and more importantly, <i>appropriate</i> tools) exist will turn it to the new [previous-tech-used-in-hopelessly-idiotic-ways].<p>This dilemma is as old as programming itself and will only go away when we introduce public flogging as punishment* for wrongly applying the "laziness is a virtue" dogma.<p>* Developers are people too (mostly) and I don't condone public violence against them. Private violence is OK.