Customers are accepting web apps. They don't care if the apps are written in Flash, js, BrainFuck, Haskell, or morse code converted into asm.js via a transcompiler written in APL.
But development is not a democracy, and the fact that n thousand projects use a certain stack doesn't mean the stack is fit for purpose.
Take the security horror that is Wordpress. It's popular because it's easy to use, but from a professional point of view it's an infosec plague and server killer.
The quibbles about js have nothing to do with its popularity. They're more about the overall lack of professionalism in software development.
The underlying issue is scope. We don't have a cathedral, or a bazaar. What we have is exactly one (1) planetary network, made of a loose affiliation of barely cooperating nodes and applications.
The original Internet infrastructure worked because the RFC process meant that the core features were designed and refined by peers. Hobby coding in the bazaar removes all elements of peer review.
But the alternative isn't a UNIX-style cathedral, it's a revised set of standards leading - eventually, I guess - to a planet-scale operating system and shared library framework that takes away all the cruft by making it unnecessary.
None of the current stacks are the right way to make that happen.
So the issue isn't js - it's more that web stacks have become de facto operating systems for industrial computing projects without any of the rigour, peer review, or oversight of a well-designed industrial gold standard OS.
And it seems that no one - or at least no one that Tim O'Reilly's authors talk to - is even thinking about how to create an OS of that quality.
But development is not a democracy, and the fact that n thousand projects use a certain stack doesn't mean the stack is fit for purpose.
Take the security horror that is Wordpress. It's popular because it's easy to use, but from a professional point of view it's an infosec plague and server killer.
The quibbles about js have nothing to do with its popularity. They're more about the overall lack of professionalism in software development.
The underlying issue is scope. We don't have a cathedral, or a bazaar. What we have is exactly one (1) planetary network, made of a loose affiliation of barely cooperating nodes and applications.
The original Internet infrastructure worked because the RFC process meant that the core features were designed and refined by peers. Hobby coding in the bazaar removes all elements of peer review.
But the alternative isn't a UNIX-style cathedral, it's a revised set of standards leading - eventually, I guess - to a planet-scale operating system and shared library framework that takes away all the cruft by making it unnecessary.
None of the current stacks are the right way to make that happen.
So the issue isn't js - it's more that web stacks have become de facto operating systems for industrial computing projects without any of the rigour, peer review, or oversight of a well-designed industrial gold standard OS.
And it seems that no one - or at least no one that Tim O'Reilly's authors talk to - is even thinking about how to create an OS of that quality.