The Great JavaScript Debate: Improve It Or Kill It

snydeq writes "Recent announcements from Google and Intel appear to have JavaScript headed toward a crossroads, as Google seeks to replace the lingua franca of the client-side Web with Dart and Intel looks to extend it with River Trail. What seems clear, however, is that as 'developers continue to ask more and more of JavaScript, its limitations are thrown into sharp relief,' raising the question, 'Will the Web development community continue to work to make JavaScript a first-class development platform, despite its failings? Or will it take the "nuclear option" and abandon it for greener pastures? The answer seems to be a little of both.'"

The unpopular vote

[gadzook33]

I know I'm going to get banned from /. for all time, but can we talk about something like Silverlight please? It's a dream to program for and it does all the stuff that we wish javascript did. Ok, begin anti-M$ rhetoric.......now

I wouldn't mind Lua

[FictionPimp]

I wouldn't mind if they added Lua to web browsers.

Static Strong

[kervin]

Give us a static strongly typed alternative/extension without the literally hundreds of known design flaws.

How about a Javascript that's more Java-like?

Re:How about neither?

[izomiac]

Apparently, someone thought the concept of files, folders, applications, and menus was too complicated for the 'average person'. Over the years, this idea has spawned countless variations of these concepts in an attempt to make them 'easier' for this hypothetical user. Ironically, the inconsistency and countless layers of abstraction made everything much harder.

Today, users aren't expected to know what any of that stuff is. The modern user isn't expected to understand what application they're using, or the difference between open or closed. Instead of discrete applications, the web browser is used for everything. Files fall way to the "cloud", the internet is the new OS, the address bar your command line. Javascript has become the new assembly language.

It's a marketer's dream, and an engineer's nightmare. Constantly changing everything breeds ignorance rather than increasing experience and sophistication. The tremendous complexity means we can see the web start to have the processing power of a 8086, and about a dozen abstracted layers from hardware, each with their own bugs. It probably won't be too much longer before computer science starts resembling biology, i.e. the dissecting and analysis of a complex system from the top down. Amusingly enough, Windows Vista contains about fourteen times more digital data than human DNA. OTOH, only 98% of DNA is 'junk', so it's probably not a fair comparison.