

JavaScript Creator Says the Language Wasn't Just Dumb Luck - PixelRobot
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/07/javascript-was-no-accident.php

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pvarangot
There are interviews to Eich and Zawinski in the "Coders at Work" book that
tell a lot about the context were Javascript was developed. They are very
interesting, and that book is almost obligatory read to anyone interested in
the history and current state of sofware development.

Crockford is also interviewed there and asked about language subsetting and
the thinking behind Javascript: The Good Parts.

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shoover
I wonder how many people who have disparaged JavaScript could actually win a
debate with Brendan Eich.

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kenjackson
I wouldn't doubt they could win if it came to issues in JS. The problems I've
seen with JS are real. Like implicit semicolon insertion just seems like a
really bad idea.

People who disparage JS aren't attacking Eich -- in fact I'd hope Eich would
agree that semicolon insertion is a mistake in retrospect (but if not, I'd
love to know why). But as users of a language we can react to inadequacies we
see in the langauge, even if we couldn't necessarily design a better one from
scratch.

With that said, I feel like a dynamic scripting language makes sense. As an
application language, I'd personally prefer a statically typed language, but
that's an argument that no one will win (from either side).

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kragen
The problem with implicit semicolon insertion is that (1) the rules for it are
too complicated and (2) it's called "semicolon insertion", which makes it
sound stupid. Lots of other languages — FORTRAN, Ruby, Python, Tcl, BASIC, sh,
LOGO — use line breaks to separate statements without the problems that come
from JS's too-clever semicolon-insertion rules.

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glenjamin
As much as I love JavaScript, I can't help but curse the Date object every
time I have to do something other than just instantiate the current local time
and print it out.

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ra
Which is all thanks to java.util.Date... zero indexed months, for example.

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billswift
Most successful people benefit more from "dumb luck" than they ever realize.
But what makes most of them successful is their ability to take advantage of
and benefit from random occurrences.

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ralfd
A hacker news submission about a hacker news comment. Enlightening.

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eric-hu
Is there any place it's more appropriate than a site called ycombinator?

