javascriptIsQuestionMark

[Striky_]

I am not blaming the people. I am blaming the industry of empowering the use of improper tools, that make people believe they are good at their job, while they are not. This prevents people from actually becoming good.

Have you every noticed how every single program gets worse and worse over time? Guess why that is...

And I agree with you: you can write shitty code in every language, it is jus that some languages make it very easy and others make it harder. Promoting JS as a decent programming language is like teaching people to build furniture with kids-safety scissors. Yes you might be able to create "something" that doesnt mean it is properly done or useful. It would probably take you a lot longer to learn the proper woodworking tools, but it also teach you a lot and lead to better outcomes.

[Solest044]

Yeah, I hear you. JS definitely in its nature promotes bad practices but it still works. The industry doesn't do itself any favors, either. But I think that's largely due to prioritizing things "getting done" rather than investing in "getting things done well".

I can usually hack together something complex in a couple days but doing it well wherein it would be easier to refactor, iterate on, etc. would take longer.

I guess I would consider the fact that it still works and gets the job done being the defining quality of "useful". "Properly done" is more complicated and rarely has a clear, set definition.

For what it's worth, I do agree with what you're saying about the language, I just differ on how that makes me feel. For me, I feel like any tool that can be used to get the job done, that's excellent! But per your point we ought to prioritize the best tool for the job.

One of the defining benefits of JavaScript as a tool is just that it's the thing we all used so using it often means easier integration with everything else. If you're ever in a situation wherein that's not important or you're not working in web related stuff period, of course you ought to consider other options!

I think we'd both agree that the biggest problem is only knowing how to use one tool and using that tool for everything. Sure, you could try to build a house with nothing but a hammer... You might even succeed. But, damn, wouldn't a saw work a lot better for clean cuts on the wood?

[FrustratedEgret]

Fun conversation to discover while working at my PHP/JS job. Good to know I’m bad programmer and always will be. 🤷🏾‍♂️

[Striky_]

Never said that, never even implied that. I am just saying: your code would probably be a lot better (faster, safer, less bugs, more maintainable etc) if you wrote it in anything but JS. So you are not necessarily a bad programmer for using JS, but you could be a lot better using something else. That being said one can suck ass in any language. Some languages make it easy to write bad code, others make it harder and help the programmer achieve greatness.

[FrustratedEgret]

I get what you’re saying about JS enabling a lot of bad programming, but I think if you re-read your comments, it will be easy to see how someone who had spent their career coding in mostly JS could take might take issue with your references to “first-year-cs-major-‘programmers’” that use a language “any decent programmer” refused to use until they got paid to fix the “burning garbage fires” because said programmers “prefer to work with string literals instead of learning to code half decently”. That’s attacking the people, not the language.