I'm still rather amazed that there is such a term as, "hardware hacking." And that it is considered <i>magical</i>. I grew up with computers where programming them was what you did with them. They were hardware. You had to learn at least a little bit of programming to get them to do anything at all.<p>Which was rather annoying and not terribly empowering for anybody but those interested in programming computers. Due to economics of scale in computing the computers I knew when I started programming have faded into the background and have been replaced by appliances that run apps. Today there are programmers who have years of experience who couldn't tell me what the size of a pointer is on their machine or how a program is executed by the operating system. Javascript is so far removed from the concerns of addressing schemes, allocations and registers that it's fun seeing people move into low-power computers from this point of view as if it's the most natural thing in the world.<p>We live in frightfully exciting times.
Devices thrive through native, strongly typed, compiled languages, because both are fast and need each other to make each other happy.<p>Programmers thrive through interpreted languages because it is fast to learn and allows boss and his programmers to craft something quickly to show up for their effort.
Small steps towards this: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/</a>
When is this JavaScript idiocy going to end? Is there some kind of conspiracy on HN and reddit where every other day somebody comes along to sing JavaScript's praises? The language has been around for donkey's years and yet every other day we get an announcement about some new square plug has been made to fit into a Javascript round hole.<p>I mean if JavaScript is so wonderful then why haven't all the important things which could and should have been accomplished with it been done by now? This madness must end.<p>The amount of time a younger and current generation of programmers have spent futzing around JavaScript simply borders on a cruel, criminal and wastful abuse of their time and talent. So much time trying to solve programs which were fixed in other languages ages ago <i></i>and inadequately so<i></i>, simply because it is 1 an interpreter, 2 it is the only one running in the browser (aka THE universal platform)<p>If Google, Microsoft et al in their desire to rent software, hang on to users data and whatnots are willing to persist with it that's fine, but why should acquiescence to their agenda lead to slavish fanboyism at the altar of Javascript?<p>Sorry if I have derailed someone's thread or pooped someone's party but the sheer impedance mismatch of this development platform drives me nuts.