Comment by exDM69
8 years ago
JS is a bad language but it's the easiest environment to set up.
Back in the day we started with Qbasic not because it is a good language but because that was easy to set up, we all had it and our friends had it and our school computers had it.
And JS is less bad a language than Qbasic.
That's debatable. It's not as if downloading Python and making your first app will take you more than a few seconds, minus download time.
Set up is rarely an issue, once you set up a language even as complex as C++ its completely automated. You press a button and magic happens.
If the biggest selling point of a programming language is that it comes preinstalled with the OS of your choice, its not much of a selling point when the average user downloads and installs GBs of data just to play the latest game hype like Fortnite.
The only people who mind installing stuff are predominately web devs. 99.9% of users out there are fine with it for more than 6 decades now and that wont be changing any time soon.
It does make a difference especially to a beginner or a child. You might not have admin privileges at your school or your friends may not be able to install those tools so you can't show your work.
But you can hack away on any computer with a browser.
there are tons of services only that will allow you to code online using any language eve C , C++ and Assembly. From inside the browser of course. Of course I am not recommending a beginner to start from any of those languages but it shows that JS does not have the monopoly of in browser coding. If you have to stick with browser no matter what.
Ideone is a popular example https://ideone.com/