From: Tony Arcieri <tony@...>
Date: 2009-09-07T06:28:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Rubyscript instead of javascript

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On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 6:58 PM, David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:

> Really? I tend to find the opposite.
>
> That is, most people who know a little Javascript and a lot of some other
> language hate Javascript.
>

As someone who works with JavaScript on a daily basis, programming in it
some and working with tools to support it the rest of the time, I really
loathe JavaScript.

JavaScript tries to force everything into a universal abstraction (the
object) and yet that universal abstraction doesn't even work consistently.

Take, for example:

  [].prototype

*gasp*  It's undefined!  How can we check if something is an array?  I
suppose this works, albeit painfully so:

  [].constructor.toString().indexOf("Array") != -1

The typical retort I hear from those who like JavaScript is that if you ever
need to do ^^^ you're writing your program wrong, however I'd just like to
add a bit of polymorphism and it seems like it requires a huge hack.

Also rather unintuitive and nonsensical is the behavior of the coercing ==
operator.  For example:

  NaN == NaN

...is false!  We lack basic reflexivity.  Even worse:

  if([]) { ... }

...is true, in a boolean context [] gets coerced into a true value,
however...

  if([] == false) { ... }

...is also true!  When coerced by the == comparison operator [] gets coerced
an entirely different way.

I'm not sure how JavaScript wound up being so painfully inconsistent.

-- 
Tony Arcieri
Medioh/Nagravision

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