Javascript: Your New Overlord

[@saionjik]

Rewatching this video after almost 2 years of coding and JavaScript went from being an iffy language to my favorite language.

[@edgeeffect]

+saionjik I hated JS... hated it... hated it... hated it! Then JQuery showed me what it should look like and I fell in love.

[@PkAllOut]

The language Crockford is looking for in the last minute of the talk is already invented and doing well and even influenced CoffeeScript a lot. I will not spoil it by naming the language but its name has four letters and it starts with R.

[@308tube]

That was a awesome history lesson and update on the current state of javascript

[@Etienne_H]

I find XML to be very useful, a very simple example would be config files. It's easy to edit and locally stored. Therefore it can be used offline, where data bases always require a connection.

[@karojosh]

Just on the database(s) point. Javascript for postgresql via plv8js, mongodb is native js. I'm pretty sure that's the point he was making. Could have been better phrased, since taken literally (although he did use the plural) Crockford is setting up a contest between nosql and relational, and who wants to keep banging on that drum? btw Eric Redmond drew a nice napkin on that subject (crud comic blase database).

[@epi42O]

the last bit was great, made up for the stale jokes in the beginning xD definitely a great video thanks!

[@DavidDouglasJr]

Wow. So, at about 32:50 he says, "all this functional stuff". There's so much contained in that one statement. Somebody needs to give a talk titled "All This Functional Stuff".

[@DavidDouglasJr]

Finally, I have found THE talk about Javascript. THE talk. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to learn coffeescript now.

[@HaloAngelBoy]

Crockford just stumbled upon the TV industry's plan. They dont want TVs to be long lived...

[@CoreyRothwell]

Time to delve back into JavaScript books.

[@michaelganesan4578]

Excellent video. Javascript rocks!

[@edgeeffect]

Not wanting to be "The Javascript Guy" probably makes Douglas Crockford THE best choice to be The Javascript Guy.

[@asdqwe4427]

+edgeeffect He absolutely wants to be the javascript guy!

[@googlyg69]

Thanks for the HyperCard reference!! I loved HyperCard.

[@niixj]

This guy... 5:56

[@jabowery]

"No one expected this..." says Crockford. Oh yeah? See the idea future's claim "JSWins" at ideosphere dotcom. Yes, I'll admit I was ahead of my time but in my defense I really didn't expect the US Congress to INCREASE the H-1b program in the midst of a job market crash circa 2000-2003. I thought we might have a hiatus during which some rationality might be recovered from Vinod Khosla's imposition of Java on India as its primary instructional language.

[@ChristopherSmall-metasoarous]

Testing my friend...

[@coolworx]

Java folks are always going to hate on Javascript. Why wouldn't they? I remember 1995. I remember all the hype around applets - those annoying gray boxes than never loaded. Poor Java didn't only fail on the World Wide Stage, it's lil' adopted red-headed brother succeeded! That sort of emotional embarrassment has got to leave a mark....

[@anzatzi]

Great presentation. II thought python would fill this role, but js has a priviledged position in the browser world and he web drives everything

[@rkulla]

Very true. Have you ever worked on a php 5.4 code base that uses a lot of javascript? Holy crap you can't even see the difference. They meet eachother half way and into an unholy mess up for braces and semi-colons. I'll take coffeescript, lispyscript, or any transcompiler over that - and python on the backend.

[@marccawood]

Not true Doug, we learned to hate JS not because of the DOM but because JS, being loosely typed and uncompiled, is just so fragile. With the advent of JSLint, smarter IDEs and stringent testing we're learning to love it again. Slowly though: it can still bring your site down with one typo...

[@MichaelLockhart]

JS = universal assembly language, i think, to judge by how many other languages compile into it! That and the fact that, unlike the JVM's classes, JS actually *is* everywhere, not an extra install or a washed down version. I am motivated by this vid to try one of the languages like CoffeeScript or ClojureScript, which compiles to JS, but I'm not actually motivated to learn JS itself other than it would be a good skill to have for debugging or reverse-engineering, or just for the hack value.

[@jackbauer6935]

Recently discovered node.js makes JavaScript a great language for small command line programs. So long Perl!

[@edgeeffect]

+Jack Bauer "good riddance, Perl!" ;)

[@coolworx]

+Jack Bauer Node is also pretty damn good for whipping up a RESTful API, in a Jiffy. Ryan Dahl is a geek gawd.

[@Fost_UK]

Google already know DART has failed. ASM may be the solution along with JS Next.

[@AlikElzin]

Good talk though controversial. Douglas Crockford talks about JS in an absolute way - "better language". I agree that JS is a powerful language. It can also be too powerful. I like to say: so powerful that it gives you *plenty of rope to hang yourself*. Examples: - JS a very *dynamic*. Though a powerful quality, it can be a problem. It make code much less expressive, makes it hard to read other people's code, let alone your own code after a few weeks. - It's *not structured*, making it hard to figure out the modules of the project. - *Reality bites* - Google are develping Dart and GWT - not because they think that JS is not powerful, but because they find it hard to develop web-apps with it. It's not scalable (team-wise) and most of the part, not readable. I worked in several work places and they all had issues with scaling up JS development. I'm sure there are success stories out there, but you need to pour a lot of money into these success stories to cut the rope when needed (and on time).

[@AlikElzin]

Oh, and I haven't even started with the discovery of API, which is so inconvenient because of the expressionless and dynamic nature of JS.

[@AlikElzin]

Java, for example tries to prevent hanging accidents - unsuccessful some times :)

[@rkulla]

I disagree with him that JavaScript is the only language people write without even knowing it. PHP has many users like that too! This is often due to the fact that many code bases are php/js and the PHP programmers write JS without knowing it and the JS programmers write PHP without knowing it.

[@beatagrzesiak3336]

DART has the full potential to become next JS

[@cherie12112]

probably but not for a while. i think it isn't yet just because of the knowledge required at level of entry, but as time passes i'm thinking cs fundamentals will be a required curriculum taught in middle/high school, then maybe dart would be the next js.

[@niixj]

4:40 is so true

[@SudeepMakwana]

I love JS ... thats y i have already Added more than 70 Video of JS in my PlayList ... haha

[@malilsisbro]

This is so sad that so much effort is spent on fixing and modifying the originally fundamentally broken language :(

[@perplexifikator]

Two people are Java programmers. :P

[@menelaus35]

I think that the biggest failure in java's history is java fx besides java applets, you can still see java applet out there on the internet. But you can't see java fx anywhere.

[@rkulla]

I also have to disagree with him that JavaScript is the only language that appeals to everyone from beginners to scientists. Python is very well known to fill that range.

[@psilocyberspaceman]

It’s always funny to hear Crockford use the words "worst" and "best" for every idea or feature, in every talk he gives over the years. Then rather arrogantly saying that people most people programming in JavaScript probably shouldn’t be programming anything at all, later followed by an appraisal of how JavaScript is for everyone from beginners to scientists. Well, PayPal pays him now.

[@Jack9C]

A lot of what he presents as facts are not. Prototypical Inheritance is more expressive? There's no evidence of that. Java on the web only as an attack vector? JNLP? JSON > XML? Probably true, but the difference between the formats is the ideology of named boundaries vs implicit boundaries. There's no evidence that one is better than the other (unnamed is simply more succinct). Javascript is built into the BEST DATABASE? I struggle to find anything worthwhile from most of his produced content.

[@coolworx]

And now Node is going to kick Java (and PHP) on the server. Ask Walmart.