Comment by coffeebeqn
3 hours ago
In my area it feels like it’s competing against go which is a language purposefully designed for the thing we’re building and has a great tool chain already. I never really wanted JavaScript. It’s not a very thoughtfully designed language and the not very good design was made for the browser. I just used node because it was simple to get it working. And you have bun and things like that competing for the space too
> It’s not a very thoughtfully designed language...
This meme has to die. It hasn't been true for longer than it was ever true. Yes, we all know Brendan Rich "designed JavaScript in a week" in 1995, but that initial design was A) actually quite elegant for its goals, and B) has really only been an historical curiosity since the ECMAScript standardization process started in 2005. There are people who were born, grew up, learned JS, and have solid careers working in it since that time.
The ECMAScript we have today, and the Typescript extensions of it, is one of the most robust, best performing, intentionally designed dynamic scripting languages on the market. It helps that every major tech corporation in the world has gobs of the stuff bearing loads somewhere in their organizations; they invest massively in making sure it's pretty good.
Before any pedant comes in to post the "Wat" talk, no, JavaScript is not a perfect language. While I personally prefer strictly typed JIT language to it, I still write a lot of it, might even be most of what I write. JavaScript today is as good of a design of a dynamic scripting language as you will find.