'The best thing we can do today to JavaScript is to retire it’ Douglas Crockford

I&#x27;m intrigued by his replacement, the language E. Even though it arose in 1997, I was unfamiliar with it. I like what I have seen so far, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;erights.org&#x2F;elang&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;erights.org&#x2F;elang&#x2F;</a><p>I&#x27;m relieved that Crockford suggests a substantial alternative, and wasn&#x27;t just bashing JavaScript. In fact I was surprised by the headline, given his history of defending the language. Instead of just suggesting another popular language like Python or Ruby, he is more specific: &quot;It needs to be a minimal capability-based actor language that is designed specifically for secure distributed programming. Nothing less should be considered.&quot;

However, there could be a really nice language emerging from the swamp.<p>Arrow notation, destructuring, functions as first class with underlying lambda calculus semantics (as opposed to lisp), async&#x2F;await, back tick templating - strong features. Just need to get rid of the old cruft. Typescript and friends seem a good first step towards an implicit type system.

Trying to get an average new developer up to speed in a modern JS environment is ridiculously hard. There are so many things that only exist due to historical accident. It&#x27;s basically a big ball of mud, where being a swamp guide is more important than being an engineer.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;laputan.org&#x2F;mud&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;laputan.org&#x2F;mud&#x2F;</a><p>As a big ball of mud, it will be really hard to replace. There&#x27;s too much value in being a swamp guide, so the swamp guides will resist anything that will take away from their status.

Webassembly is the way forward. Why create a new language when you can use any language though WASM. It is already built around capabilities and you can implement an actor system easily, something that has already been done (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wasmcloud.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wasmcloud.com&#x2F;</a>) for the backend.

I would love a [forked] Ruby to replace Javascript. Have it embedded in browsers too.

In my opinion, the web in general should be retired. It&#x27;s ultimately a technology originally designed for rich documents that has been feature-creeped to be a general-purpose application platform, and that results in a variety of issues. I think we should move towards using domain-specific open standards.

&gt; But since then, there has been strong interest in further bloating the language instead of making it better.<p>Totally agree. JS the Good Parts is what got me into JS around 2007. It used to be so accessible, this neat subset of features, coupled with the DOM.<p>The web in general has the problem of a million ways to do the same thing, and none of them works quite right.

I actually think we need to teach a different way of using and embrace client minimalism with streams.<p>Even though I suspect stadia is going to get shutdown, I believe in using the network as the computer with edge computing to turn the browser into a dumb terminal. This is the basis for the web framework that I am making.<p>I&#x27;m having lots of fun.

Bury it in the desert. Wear gloves.

Millions of JavaScript monoglot voices suddenly cried out in terror. Unfortunately, they won&#x27;t be suddenly silenced.

The JS community has done some awesome things to bring the language to a more mature and interesting place, in spite of Crockford.<p>His awful book that tried to teach JS like Java, and his framework at yahoo called YUI stood more in the way of progress than anything else.<p>Criticism is certainly warranted but I don’t see him having a track record of creative and interesting thought in this space to offer it