Comment by quantadev

Comment by quantadev 3 days ago

21 replies

View on Hacker News

The biggest tragedy in the history of software engineering was back in the mid 1990s when they failed to get Java (Applets) to run in the browser so they had to invent JavaScript, which was purely nothing but a hack put together over a weekend by one guy and it "stuck" like napalm onto humanity and has been burning us ever since. I would say at least one billion man hours (100 billion? Trillion?) has been wasted trying to contend with all the ugliness that ensued. Even the most popular language today on the web TypeScript only has one reason for existing: To try to continue to work around this napalm fire, in some semblance of a tolerable way.

Sure I love TypeScript, and use it every day, because it's the best solution to the current dumpster fire, but I'd like to get away from dumpsters some day. So it's really refreshing to see something good being done to replace this mess we call "Web Development"

meiraleal 3 days ago

Java is the new COBOL in many places, thanks God it is not part of the browser. Such a terrible development of language, terribly slow for anything desktop, terribly slow as DX. We would have 100x more people complaining if there weren't a script attached to that Java.

Reply View 1 reply
  • quantadev 3 days ago

    Most people just can't objectively do the "Counterfactual Thinking" of what if only Java had ever existed and JavaScript never did.

    Any developer who has loved JS all their lives would've also loved Java if that's what was available to them all their life. It's largely just what you're used to.

    Running JS on the server side is just a mess, and has only been popular to do since NodeJS was invented. Imagine if it was always the SAME code on both client and server starting since 1995. That would've definitely been a better world by far.

    Reply View 0 replies
mixmastamyk 3 days ago

Applets did run in the browser, I wrote a couple.

Reply View 12 replies
  • quantadev 3 days ago

    I wrote lots of Applets too. My parenthetical "(Applets)" in that post was misleading, sorry.

    Java and Applets pre-existed JavaScript, and purely due to a 10 day timing constraint put on him by Netscape management (right after their deal with Sun Microsystems), Brendan Eich, wanting a Java-syntax, but not having enough time to do it right, cobbled together JavaScript instead.

    Reply View 11 replies
    • BrendanEich 18 hours ago

      I did not want Java-syntax, that was an order from management (Sun as well as Netscape; Bill Joy for Sun).

      Java applets could not interact with HTML at all, just render within a rectangle. They were in the plugin prison, where Flash shanked them nicely due to better tooling and innovation from Macromedia (bought by Adobe).

      Reply View 0 replies
    • wiseowise 3 days ago

      > and purely due to a 10 day timing constraint put on him by Netscape management (right after their deal with Sun Microsystems), Brendan Eich, wanting a Java-syntax, but not having enough time to do it right, cobbled together JavaScript instead.

      Stop spreading FUD. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

      Stuff that people hate wasn’t even part of the original demo.

      https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/did-brendan-eich-...

      Reply View 9 replies
      • quantadev 3 days ago

        I read that whole blog post and nothing in there disagrees with what I said.

        Reply View 8 replies
wiseowise 3 days ago

[flagged]

Reply View 5 replies