Poprocks  wrote:
> What do you perceive to be the issue with JavaScript?  Is it an inherent
> with the language itself, or is it just over-used?

I don't have much issue with JS the language.  JS won over Java because Java
wasn't integrated with web pages - a Java applet was just a rectangle into
which it rendered pixels.  The same was somewhat true of Flash.  Meanwhile
JS was able to interact with the DOM which gave us all the kinds of
interactive HTML that we're now familiar with.  HTML and then JS when you
needed it was much more responsive than HTML and a Java app that would take
5-10 seconds to start.

That's not to say JS is perfect.  I think it's better as an interpreted
language than a precompiled one (as Java bytecode or Flash is) - you still
have to run an interpreter or JIT for Java bytecode as you do for JS, so
having bytecode actually removes semantic content compared with having the
source avaiable.  It would have been nice to have stronger typing, but
that's largely a problem for programmers not users.

> I think we can probably all agree that when it was conceived in 1995, it
> was probably only intended to give webpages a bit of "help" with some
> client-side operations, but not to completely replace the heavy lifting
> of processing of information, which ought to be done on the server side
> with more capable languages (yes, I am aware of Node.js and all that
> jazz.  Not super familiar with it, but it all still seems like trying to
> pound a round peg into a square hole to me).

I disagree.  It's much better to do the lifting on the client side - because
the latency on the client is much lower than having to make requests over
the internet.  When doing it server-side the user spends a lot of time in
'Waiting...' 'Connecting...' etc.  You'd never put up with that for native
apps, and you shouldn't for the web either.

> > And some of those scripts are doing intrinsically complicated things, like
> > doing a live auction of the user's eyeballs to the highest bidder
advertiser
> > - all while the page loads.
>
> I think this is an example of a *good* usage of JavaScript.

I'm sure from the ad network's perspective :)

> However, for users who disable JavaScript, in such situations the page
> ought to still *work* and show the updated information if the user
> reloads the page, instead of just refusing to work at all, which is what
> we see all too often.

That's fine if it's a 'page' of static content like a newspaper.  If it's
Facebook much of what people do won't work (no likes, no posting, no
replies, no messaging, no photo tagging, no videos, etc).  Yes you can read
Facebook like a newspaper but most people want interaction.  And FB has no
concept of 'pages' - it's an infinite scroll powered by JS.

> Now, with --- to use your example --- Google Docs, I can barely get the
> thing to run on my 2-in-1 Intel CherryTrail tablet, with 4GB of RAM and
> a (admittedly underpowered) multicore x86_64 processor.
>
> And yet, I know if I was somehow able to access the Android mobile app
> (likely written in Java incidentally, though I stand to be corrected on
> this), my guess is it'd work quite well.

I'm not sure that's intrinsic, merely that Docs is designed to run on
desktops/laptops (lots of RAM, big screens, etc) and the app is designed for
a mobile environment (small screens, less RAM, less connectivity).  They
have been optimised for niches and it's not clear that is a function of the
language.

(everything from the Atom line of processors is slow, IMX)

> I'll add that I've been quite impressed by Falkon.  It utilizes Qt
> WebEngine but has a fully native C++ Qt interface.  It won't be as light
> and zippy as something like links -g or dillo, of course, but it seems
> to be a very good candidate for a "middle-weight" browser.  It also
> manages to look quite a bit like Chrome, which makes the interface
> friendly and familiar.

Interesting.  There's some other Webkit- and Blink-based browsers that
might be worth playing with, although I'm not sure what counts as
lightweight:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Web_browsers

Theo

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