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Comment on JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) - Jono Alderson

chromodynamic@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Client-side scripting is a hack. HTML didn't have all the tags people wanted or needed, so instead of carefully updating it to include new features, they demanded that browsers just execute arbitrary code on the user's computer, and with that comes security vulnerabilities, excessive bandwidth use and a barrier-to-entry that makes it difficult to develop new browsers, giving one company a near-monopoly.

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AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Wanted, maybe, but needed? It even had marquee, what else could anyone need?

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cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

makes it difficult to develop new browsers, giving one company a near-monopoly.

Totally an accident by the way! They weren’t trying to become a monopoly, promise!

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sbv@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Developers wanted to build and deploy apps to end user machines. The round trip for page loads was lousy for usability.

Java applets were too shitty. Flash was too janky and hard to work with. So Mozilla started adding JavaScript as a hack. It filled a need.

a barrier-to-entry that makes it difficult to develop new browsers,

It definitely adds a barrier to entry, but JavaScript was really perfected in chromium, which is a different codebase from the folks who proposed and built js to begin with.

I’m not saying JavaScript is good, but it fills a need.

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rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’ve read it wasn’t a hack, but my memory is mixed and I’m as old as JavaScript.

It was somewhat of a consensus that scriptability is needed. Java applets, Flash, Sun plans to add support for scripting webpages with Java, alternative plans for the same with TCL, Netscape plans for the same with some Lisp, and then they decided upon what became JS.

A lot of things are scriptable and it is convenient. I’m not sure anyone expected this to be just used as a base for more and more complexity in an application platform. Probably the idea was that scripted hypertext pages will remain such, and in future there will be other dedicated technologies for other purposes.

I’m fascinated with Java, just can’t concentrate on learning it. My idea of a wonder language would run on something like JVM (or like Forth machine, LOL) and be as terse and simple as TCL.

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