So which scripting language? Most popular, and the best?

the problem I have with that medium post is that it smacks of amateur opinion. all languages have their pro's and con's, and in the end it is about how much a language is used in the world that verifies its popularity and usefulness.

learn javascript. get over your strongly typed, memory managed, multi-threaded safety nets from the world of java et al.

i think people call javascript a mess because, like erlang and a few others, it is asynchronous and non-blocking. from a programmers perspective it can get confusing keeping track of callbacks (with or without help from e.g. promises)...

but to slant it as a mess, you are slanting netflix, uber and many others who are running their ENTIRE STACK on javascript.

Using things like typescript and coffeescript should be a convenience, not an excuse to get away from the intracacies of javascript (and by extension ECMASCRIPT)

ok.. so to answer your question, if you want to get into web and user facing things, learn javascript as your primary scripting language. If you want to get into hardware, backends, etc, use python as your scripting language - please note I am giving suggestions as to scripting languages and not saying a .NET stack or Java stack on the back end is not viable - although in my own experience, the nodejs stacks I have developed have blown .NET and Java out the water. We are talking an order of magnitude more transactions per second than the incumbants using exactly the same system resources.
 
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Thor187 said:
Javascript is the future of the web
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Its good to hear advice from one so "experienced".

Tell us more about this non-type-safe, non OO, non-threaded, non-compiled language you think is "the future of the web", please.
 
I wouldn't use Python for backend (or any serious project) ever again.

If you are going into web development you'll have to learn the very capable abortion that is javascript.

Nodejs is pretty good but I have something that blows it out of the water and renders it pretty useless
 
stricken said:
the problem I have with that medium post is that it smacks of amateur opinion. all languages have their pro's and con's, and in the end it is about how much a language is used in the world that verifies its popularity and usefulness.

learn javascript. get over your strongly typed, memory managed, multi-threaded safety nets from the world of java et al.

i think people call javascript a mess because, like erlang and a few others, it is asynchronous and non-blocking. from a programmers perspective it can get confusing keeping track of callbacks (with or without help from e.g. promises)...

but to slant it as a mess, you are slanting netflix, uber and many others who are running their ENTIRE STACK on javascript.

Using things like typescript and coffeescript should be a convenience, not an excuse to get away from the intracacies of javascript (and by extension ECMASCRIPT)

ok.. so to answer your question, if you want to get into web and user facing things, learn javascript as your primary scripting language. If you want to get into hardware, backends, etc, use python as your scripting language - please note I am giving suggestions as to scripting languages and not saying a .NET stack or Java stack on the back end is not viable - although in my own experience, the nodejs stacks I have developed have blown .NET and Java out the water. We are talking an order of magnitude more transactions per second than the incumbants using exactly the same system resources.
Click to expand...
Well it could be said that only "an amateur" would so bold as to simply dismiss what James Mickens said (re Javascript) as the smacking of an amateur, maybe it's good to first understand who he is:
I'd argue that Javascript is here only because of its history, not for any great or notable attribute it possesses + I'd also argue it only remains because it's going to be difficult to reach consensus now that the decision is no longer just down to what Mozilla thinks....and if I was asked for advice on what language to learn.

I'd simply say this: you'd be better off learning a real language or at least something that took a little more than 10 days to throw together; in no particular order any of these would be better for you in the long run:
  • C, C++, C#, F#, Haskell, Java, Swift, ...

Finally take some time to look at this before you make your decision about future web development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W7NkofUtAw

As for the rest of your performance rumblings; you certainly come across as a too loyal javascript / python person. Ps. if you're serious about this, then please share any real high performance computing examples you have i.e. where javascript / python have proved to achieve greater throughput than .Net or Java, or.... At this stage I can only surmise that you probably wrote the Java / .Net code you compared to javascript, which leads to the next question of how good is your Java or .Net foo.
 
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Hamster said:
I wouldn't use Python for backend (or any serious project) ever again.

If you are going into web development you'll have to learn the very capable abortion that is javascript.

Nodejs is pretty good but I have something that blows it out of the water and renders it pretty useless
Click to expand...
As you said today the options are limited, the "abortion" called javascript can't be avoided; but for anyone new to programming it's certainly IMO not the best way to secure your future as it's a necessary evil that a majority just wish would die.

Google tried to push Dart to replace javascript but gave up once it realised it would be impossible to convince everyone to use a language they created; hence the joint push now by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft and Apple behind WebAssembly, because that in theory would allow all the real languages (C, C++, Go, C#, Java, Swift, ...) to be used instead of javascript.
 
stricken said:
but to slant it as a mess, you are slanting netflix, uber and many others who are running their ENTIRE STACK on javascript.
s.
Click to expand...

FYI, Don't think Quora is the definitive source of knowledge, Uber and Netflix's entire stacks are not just javascript. They use Go, Java, Groovy, Python, Clojure, C++ and C# to name a few.
 
[)roi(];16966585 said:
As you said today the options are limited, the "abortion" called javascript can't be avoided; but for anyone new to programming it's certainly IMO not the best way to secure your future as it's a necessary evil that a majority just wish would die.
Click to expand...

I'll disagree with you on this point, if you are a front end "engineer", they are always in demand.
 
stricken said:
ok.. so to answer your question, if you want to get into web and user facing things, learn javascript as your primary scripting language. If you want to get into hardware, backends, etc, use python as your scripting language - please note I am giving suggestions as to scripting languages and not saying a .NET stack or Java stack on the back end is not viable - although in my own experience, the nodejs stacks I have developed have blown .NET and Java out the water. We are talking an order of magnitude more transactions per second than the incumbants using exactly the same system resources.
Click to expand...

Your .NET and Java sucks then.
 
semaphore said:
Your .NET and Java sucks then.
Click to expand...

Lol... Strange that I've never seen any high performance computing research papers centered on Javascript. Does that mean my Javascript foo sucks?
 
[)roi(];16966665 said:
Sure., but it's a poor future investment.
Click to expand...

You are entitled to your opinion.

But the fact remains there are thousands of them making very good money in the field, so your point is pretty moot.
 
[)roi(];16966671 said:
Lol... Strange that I've never seen any high performance computing research papers centered on Javascript. Does that mean my Javascript foo sucks?
Click to expand...

To be fair that's a stupid statement, javascript was not designed for high performance computing applications. You need to compare equal domains.
 
semaphore said:
You are entitled to your opinion.

But the fact remains there are thousands of them making very good money in the field, so your point is pretty moot.
Click to expand...

To clarify, I learnt C in 1984; and its still today considered one of the best ways to build HPC or LL apps. If WebAssembly takes off just how long will Javascript linger; have a feeling its more like Flash ActionScript than C. How do the AS developers feel today, or the LotusScript (Lotus Notes) guys?
 
semaphore said:
To be fair that's a stupid statement, javascript was not designed for high performance computing applications. You need to compare equal domains.
Click to expand...
Poor targeting. Its not me making the silly claims. You missed the sarcasm; didn't think I needed to be explicit.
 
[)roi(];16966693 said:
To clarify, I learnt C in 1984; and its still today considered one of the best ways to build HPC or LL apps. If WebAssembly takes off just how long will Javascript linger; have a feeling its more like Flash ActionScript than C. How do the AS developers feel today, or the LotusScript (Lotus Notes) guys?
Click to expand...

Agree, C is awesome I love it.

Javascript wont be disappearing any time soon, I imagine there will be a convergence or overlap of the two standards.
 
[)roi(];16966693 said:
To clarify, I learnt C in 1984; and its still today considered one of the best ways to build HPC or LL apps. If WebAssembly takes off just how long will Javascript linger; have a feeling its more like Flash ActionScript than C. How do the AS developers feel today, or the LotusScript (Lotus Notes) guys?
Click to expand...

What are these?
 
semaphore said:
Agree, C is awesome I love it.

Javascript wont be disappearing any time soon, I imagine there will be a convergence or overlap of the two standards.
Click to expand...

Yeah, its the 21st century's Cobol; even a few of those guys are still employed.
 
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