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I blame John Ressig.
Before JQuery, javascript was... not exactly rare, but not exactly ubiquitous, either. After all, pre-JQ, if you wanted to use JS, you had to know all the foibles of individual browser differences, and there were lots of differences back in those days. That damn dollar sign changed all that. JS exploded on the client side, which made the Goog take notice and create V8.
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As Scar* would say: "Awww, we scripties aint all that bad..."
*Scar (The Lion King) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[^]
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Well that's just it. It *is* the language of the web. JavaScript has always dominated that. That hasn't changed, it just snuck its way into the server world, and now we have a whole new world opened up, such as prepossessing and transpiling, running scripts instead of shell or batch scripts, etc. I don't think it'll ever replace a hardcore server language until it fully compiles, but it's nice to have one that can do so much now, less crap to remember in our older age.
Oddly enough, Java wanted to be one language to rule them all. And now look, JavaScript, the kid sister is at it too.
But all of this will change when WASM is the new kid on the block. Just think about it, you open up your favorite IDE. Have a C++ project going, and when you compile, instead of choosing Win32 or Win64 as a compile target, you choose WASM. It's like MSIL, but for the web. Things are gonna change man. The future is bright for the web. This whole Node.js is just a stepping stone into blurring the lines between desktops and web apps.
Jeremy Falcon
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Sprinkle a little XML in there too and we'll be set.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I'll see your XML, and raise you a JSON. We don't need to schema validation for the web. It's a dangerous place and we like it that way.
Jeremy Falcon
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You kill me.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Jeremy Falcon
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I really liked the idea of Silverlight, but Microsoft decided that HTML 5 would be such a great silver bullet. What else is new: HTML 5 is just as much a write once, debug everywhere and rewrite as the previous versions. Obviously Silverlight was never going to be the Silver bullet, but it you would willing to limit your browsers to those it was implemented for, it would have worked. For many people that would have been good enough. I was even hoping that Silverlight applications could look like desktop applications. Another Balmer mistake.
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Ah, so the same as every other theory.
Basically, if you're doing client-side web dev, you have no real choice.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Chris Maunder wrote: And the meek script kiddies shall inherit them both.
Marc
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Mmm... this certainly is interesting.
I have been thinking for a while now that I would like to port my service bus from C# to node. I have some elementary node experience but ample JavaScript. Then I thought to myself: "What would be the point in having a C# alternative when anyone can run the node version?"
I'll have to see where I end up 
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Things like Emscripten[^] and Fable[^] give some hope that writing directly in Javascript isn't the only option, but I suspect the masses are probably heading for JS...
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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The reason javascript succeeded as much as it has is for one reason: It was non-Microsoft. All of the reason we say the Microsoft approach failed are only applicable to Microsoft. When someone else tries to bring about a closed, proprietary, and poor-performing system that only works on limited platforms, suddenly it's the host OS that needs to adapt.
The real breakthrough will occur when a sizeable-enough contingent of developers realizes the folly of writing any kind of serious application code for a browser. I think it will happen when someone finally tires of having to spend 95% of the coding effort just to get the code to work normally in a browser. It takes time to mover the heard, though. But hey, there's hope. Now that Microsoft gives away its OS, there's no need to cripple ourselves in a browser anymore, right? Moooo.... Baaahhhhhh.... The herd is stirring...
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Actually, I disagree.
The browser has become an OS-Neutral platform of its own.
It has sucked a lot, until recently, and is SLOWLY getting better.
I would prefer to write desktop apps, in general. But I see the where
this is going. We are getting close to the right experience of a desktop app
in a browser, and the server gets lots of real-time information.
The server can be anywhere.
Needing code on the client side ONLY makes sense, and javascript fits the bill.
Now, we have limitations abound, and holes and bugs everywhere. But I am already
looking at one page web apps using Node as a replacement for some desktop apps,
and they are going to be OS Neutral. Even able to work fine and scale to mobile.
Something that was really really hard for me before this.
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JavaScript is the new "dBase" / FoxPro of this decade... type less; dynamic; a perception that it is "next-generation" ... spending all your time getting fringe cases working / performing / looking good.
Improvements in bandwidth will make the whole perceived "client-server" debate redundant; while one continues to try and master the "web stack" of choice.
Those that "don't know any better", are already running Windows apps, connected to devices (IOT?), over the net, using the likes of TeamViewer ... successfully.
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I agree. It might sound a bit strange, but for myself personally, I tend to find languages that would seem to be very similar as very different in terms of "fun to program". I hated Pascal, yet liked C, and then later C++, once I got the hang of it. I liked BASIC but not quite as much FORTRAN (and really began to hate FORTRAN once I learned C). I didn't care much for Java, but like C#. Oh, and the little I've seen of Javascript makes me want to puke.
As for stacks, I liked the non-.NET Visual C++, except for the hokey MAP macros and the inability to recolor the background of a TextBox via a simple function  , but never liked the ASP.NET (I could never figure out how to map the messages properly  , so I used the same message handler, which I have even forgotten the name of, for all events.  ) I really liked the .NET WinForms stack, especially the way that the message handling was done (even though the Delegate class seemed to be a bit hokey), other than the fact that I couldn't find a gig with it. 
modified 8-Aug-16 20:37pm.
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Chris: I find your post amusing, but flawed.
JavaScript is not a horrible, stunted play language, but a new paradigm in the making.
Remember delegates? Those were imported from JavaScript, not C, as most people think.
Remember lambas? Again from functional programming.
Asynchronous? JavaScript again, from day one, with the setTimeout() routine.
JavaScript has been sort of a playground for new technologies, and JSON is the most exciting of them. Imagine embedding data, algorithms and references in one simple format.
Today, with Express you can create extremely complex data extraction without the burden of Entities, JDO, Code-first and all those "wonderful" things that went awry when implemented.
JavaScript and fellows have never gone south. They have kept clean and real.
My two bitcoins.
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A great deal of professional coding is copy/paste. I'm not ashamed.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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loctrice wrote: A great deal of professional coding is copy/paste.
And adjust variable names and tweak code to work in what I have so far. If you can just copy and paste most of what you do, then you are not a programmer/developer and not working on anything very complex, in my opinion. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Yeah, that was implied.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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Of course, but that makes your code look a lot like spaghetti. 
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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...and a vast number of bugs in professionally coded products are caused by failure to edit such code safely.
The PVS-Studio chaps frequently run articles summarising issues found in Open Source projects. For example, the following is for CryEngine V Errors[^].
Every single article like this usually includes copy-pasta errors. Its a valid technique, but you may want to employ a good static analysis tool alongside to protect your ass.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Good artists copy, great artists steal.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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...and p*ss artists drink! 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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