You know why we have JavaScript? Because someone went and built it. Once it was built, it existed and people used it. All the theories about what a scripting language for the web should look like fell out the window the moment someone went and put one in their browser.
De facto standards beat de jure standards. Every time.
Theory is great. It makes for amazing and stimulating conversation. But in the real world the only thing that counts is building shit.
PS: this is also why English is the global language of trade and not Esperanto. Even though English is both harder to learn, has a terrible "API", and inconsistent semantics and grammar and syntax. Esperanto is clean and well designed and and learnable in 150 hours and not used by anyone.
> De facto standards beat de jure standards. Every time.
Only for a very base definition of "beat". People are falling over themselves to write X-to-Javascript compilers because Javascript simply isn't good enough.
Well, presumably an advance will eventually provide a competitive advantage.
For example, before the Copernican revolution, we had a model for the cosmos that made decent predictions. The heliocentric model actually made worse predictions for a long time until it was evolutionary improved. However, to the early scientists who adopted it, the heliocentric model "felt right."
Maybe right now programming in a shitty language like javascript with no regard to program structure is better at "getting shit done" than programming in a functional language using universal abstractions like composition. To people who study and think about it, though, it "feels right." Perhaps if they stick with it and perfect the art, it will eventually provide such a competitive advantage that it will be universally adopted.
There are already JS libraries for things like functional composition. If current trends persist, it will eventually get language-level support for that.
JavaScript is a tricky language like that. It lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare syntax and semantics. Much like English.
You know why we have JavaScript? Because someone went and built it. Once it was built, it existed and people used it. All the theories about what a scripting language for the web should look like fell out the window the moment someone went and put one in their browser.
De facto standards beat de jure standards. Every time.
Theory is great. It makes for amazing and stimulating conversation. But in the real world the only thing that counts is building shit.
PS: this is also why English is the global language of trade and not Esperanto. Even though English is both harder to learn, has a terrible "API", and inconsistent semantics and grammar and syntax. Esperanto is clean and well designed and and learnable in 150 hours and not used by anyone.