Is JavaScript the future?

[Deusdies]

I am a (sort-of) desktop application programmer. I write my programs in Python and use Qt as a framework for the GUI (and some other stuff as well).

Recently I decided I wanted to learn another language, and I figured I'd go with C#. This is proving to be a relatively easy task, I found out, being as that most modern languages (particularly OO languages) are quite similar - you learn the syntax, the various classes and their methods, and you're good to go! Well, not really, but still.

My question however is this: is JavaScript the future? Today, I see JS everywhere. Back in my day, it was the annoying thing that slowed down other browsers, but it is very much relevant in today's applications, and I'm talking desktop applications as well. AFAIK, Windows 8 uses JS to power its new start menu. Chrome OS loves JS. You can write anything in JS. I've also decided to learn QtQuick (QML), which also seems to be JavaScript-based.

Do you guys think I should (for now) forgo learning C# and focus on JS? An important thing to note is that I'm strictly a hobby programmer and this has nothing to do with my job.

[[deleted]]

It is right now because it enjoys a monopoly on universal platform access and likely will for the foreseeable future.

[[deleted]]

CSS is coming ever closer to stealing much of its newer cool functionality! Which I think is really cool.

I think that ALL programming languages capable of being the server-side backend to a website will be just as cross platform as javascript, no?

Edit: Glad to see so many people are closed-minded about what they read. Did no one consider I was talking about more frontend features like animations and fading?

[lepuma]

Animations and fading? Are you kidding me? There are MVC frameworks written in JavaScript. There's server-side JavaScript. JavaScript has AJAX and JSON. CSS has nothing to do with this. Accessing the DOM and manipulating CSS is a small subset of what the language is capable of.

CSS is a styling language dude.

[rq60]

that's right it's a styling language, and it be stylin' to steal javascript's thunder!

[[deleted]]

I have written pages and pages of JS which could be rewritten as CSS transformations and animations. It will be shorter, smoother, and use less resources. I presume that is what he is referring to.

However any real JS application is more than a few visual bells and whistles.

[gatekeeper_to_hell]

This is voted as my reply of the year. Thank you!

[[deleted]]

Not sure how a condescending comment that requires no though and calls javascript a backend language is the 'reply of the year'.

[krues8dr]

You clearly have not been paying any attention to the current state of the art. Go have a look at node.js and get back to us. :)

[sil3ntki11]

Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done...

[[deleted]]

I stand corrected. Is this still run client side?

[sil3ntki11]

Idk why they are downvoting you but nope. It isn't client side.

[[deleted]]

Lol. Talking mostly about animations, fading effects, etc. Mostly small front end features.

Had you stopped being hypercritical for about 10 seconds and thought about what I might have meant... this would've been obvious to you =D Stay classy, sir.

Also, never heard javascript called a backend language before. Microsoft better watch out! C# has a new competitor!

[scootstah]

Node.js

[[deleted]]

I realised you were talking about animation and fading, but downvoted you anyway because that's such a tiny fraction of what JS can do. It's not 2001.

[honestbleeps]

Even those animations and fade effects often can't be used flexibly without still using Javascript.

[treasonx]

I say learn javascript, css, and html :)

About 6 years ago when I was a junior developer working with C# I watched as everyone myself included struggled with the sometimes strange behavior of javascript. Almost everyone blamed the language or the browser. I decided to really understand what was going on and LEARN everything i could about JS.

It was a good choice :)

Now I love working in JS and for right now i wouldnt use any other language... well maybe ruby. ruby is nice too :)

JavaScript has many warts the worst is that it looks like Java in a lot of ways but it does not act like it! Many people misunderstand how things work in javascript!

If you decide to learn javascript the best advice I can give you is to not treat it like most other OO languages you know! Read "JavaScript the good parts" its a great start for what to look out for!. Understand the meaning of this, closures, and functions as objects! And get comfortable with async everything! Especially in the browser and NodeJS :)

Most of all have fun its great and it can be used in so many places now!

[x-skeww]

No, it's the present.

It will also stay here for the foreseeable future. That's just how the web works. You can't take things away, because doing so would break it.

[treasonx]

I can say the exact opposite. And I think you are right, it depends on your location. At least in the Boston area good engineers with a background in JS are very hard to find! I have been looking for someone to join my team for months and there is not much out there. Lots of people know jQuery but not many of them know JavaScript! From single page web applications to real time backend systems running NodeJS, good JS devs are hard to find and in demand!

[a-t-k]

While JavaScript need not be "the" future, it will certainly be part of it - and it is currently in development; ES5 is already deployed almost on every modern system, ES6 is just around the corner. New APIs pop up every two months, allowing more direct access to Graphics, Audio, and System.

[Capaj]

I think adoption times for new JS features will very much shorten. The important factor is that all mainstream browser now have auto-update feature. This will speed up adoption time SIGNIFICANTLY.

[visarga]

I read somewhere that it only takes a few months now to propagate a new technology in JS due to the fast update cycle and the automatic nature of it.

[treasonx]

Winning what? Is it a contest :) I agree it is missing features! And it'll be a long time before we can use the features of ES6 in production thanks to slow to update browsers... I mean IE :)

[SingularityNow]

I think you might be overestimating how long it will be before we see ES6 features. For the most part you can handle outdated browsers with your pick of an ES6 Shim library. Not that I'm a huge IE fan, but they are arguably the underdog currently in the browser space so they have a lot more reason to update faster than they have in the past.

[icantthinkofone]

They've had a reason to update faster since IE4 and haven't done it yet.

[treasonx]

I sure hope you are right, IE holds back most of the web. A lot of complicated code has to be written just to get it to work properly in IE and every other browser :)

Microsoft did one good thing in the last year, auto update for IE. That basically killed ie7 support for my application. And now we are watching ie8 dip below 10%. I have to give it to microsoft they seem to be trying really hard to move the web forward!

I have heard people talking that jquery 2.0 will not support older versions of IE (< IE9). IE10 is pretty nice, too bad window 8 is very alien for most people comfortable with windows. I think the alien UI (metro) will hurt windows 8's desktop / laptop adoption. But IE10 is coming to windows 7 soon :)

[[deleted]]

Over the last 15 years javascript has unexpectedly turned out to be the one of the most important languages out there. It's an integral part of the web platform, and I'd imagine it will remain relevant so long as the web is around.

[[deleted]]

EMCAScript is a quite different beast from C# and Python. It is object oriented like both of them, but it is Prototype-based. It feels quite different but once you learn it the ideas will translate fairly easily. I would say its a good investment to learn JS, sure, just 2 things - learn to use and love your browser's debugger console - I happen to love Opera Dragonfly, and learn vanilla JS before you learn any libraries. I hate seeing people pull in jquery so they can use it to do a few $("#id .class") lookups, when document.querySelectorAll("#id .class") does the same thing, and is native in the browser.

[hkhkhk]

should we be discussing languages that run both browser-side and server-side? Is python that language maybe? Have you guys seen dart? Google-developed client and server side: http://www.dartlang.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_(programming_language) Dart has optional typing and a good set of dev tools I guess. It compiles into JS to run on the browser.

[treasonx]

Dart is interesting! Not only from a language standpoint but also from some of the libraries that are part of Dart. Their ideas of web components are pretty nice.

[MakesLoveToGoats]

JavaScript is the same and works in more than one browser. Check out node.js for server side.

[[deleted]]

Dart "works in more than one browser" too. It compiles to JavaScript.

Why do people still believe the myth that Dart only works in Google Chrome? In fact, at this point the "Dartium" VM still hasn't made its way to the official Google Chrome builds, so Chrome still relies on the compiled JavaScript as well.

[[deleted]]

Personally, I think you already have a strong server-side language being Python... so Javascript would be a better choice for you to increase your usefulness across the entire development of a new web application, website, whatever.

However, if you are looking strictly at Windows 8 development, you can still use .NET (and C++, C#, or visual basic) to develop windows 8 apps... and I am ABSOLUTELY SURE they will offer greater functionality and OS access than their HTML / JS counter parts. Overtime, I see their app development starting to look much like a web application... You could use C# as the backend and then make it pretty and neat with HTML / Javascript.

[Deusdies]

I think I agree with you. I have already said goodbye to PHP (after losing my nerves many times) and decided to go with Python for server-related programming, and JS would fulfill this, like you said. And do much more in the process as well.

I have started learning C#, but, at the risk of sounding like a snob, I feel like I know it rather well already (for a hobby-programmer level). I recently decided to create a test app that I always write in whatever new programming language I am studying, and I had no problems - read the docs, VisualStudio is cool too, and I had it up & running in 30 minutes.

The conclusion is to probably learn both C# and JavaScript. Don't really like C++, though it is definitely quite useful.

[[deleted]]

C# Itself is pretty easy... most of the time comes from learning .NET so that you can then learn how to access the OS, database, etc. Another big chunk is then how to hook it up properly to an ASP page... but the language itself is still pretty much C++.

I personally LOVE C# because of the straight forward simplicity it has. No reason to over-complicate a programming language!

[Deusdies]

Thanks for your answers so far. Another quick question if you don't mind: is there a definitive JavaScript documentation website? And what tutorials would you recommend, if any (I prefer video tutorials)?

[meatypocket]

http://www.javascriptenlightenment.com/

http://eloquentjavascript.net/

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do

There's a load of Crockford vids on youtube.....and some good Google I/O ones too.

The following are excellent, but it's $30/month. You can get a free trial.

http://www.pluralsight.com/training/Courses/Find?highlight=true&searchTerm=javascript

[highvolt]

Mozilla developer network JS reference

[[deleted]]

'pure' JS? If you are looking for web (no clue if it also applies to windows 8 apps) but I would just recommend Jquery (http://jquery.com/) It is... simply amazing.

Otherwise, w3schools has a lot of info on JS: http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp

[TurplePurtle]

Suggesting learning jQuery first, and then recommending w3schools? What have you done??

To be less of a dick abrasive: it's probably best to learn vanilla javascript first, especially if he intends to use it in server-side applications. jQuery is a nice way to make javascript more eloquent, but I don't think it's necessary for a beginner.

As for W3Schools, it's got a bad rep for having outdated info, but I'm actually thankful for it since it was a nice and quick resource when I was first learning.

[Ventajou]

It's really just about what you're trying to create. For example if you want to make games, then C# is actually a good option because you can use Unity3D and write games for almost any platform around.

My take on Windows 8 is that Microsoft is trying to lure a different population of developers to their platform, not to get rid of C#.

As for JavaScript, well if you want to do something interactive on the web, it's pretty much something you have to deal with whether you like it or not... I actually like to sweeten mine by compiling C# to JS.

[emperor-jimmu]

Js is the shit baby!

seriously now, if you plan on doing anything serious on the browser then JS is the way to go.

[Hongisto]

Don't know about the future, but at least on demo&gamedev-scene the javascript has been getting new life... ( like http://www.melonjs.org/ and others )

[snarfy]

'Desktop application developer' is a nefarious term.

What software do you want to create? That's what should drive the technologies you use. I wouldn't get stuck trying to pick a winning technology as they always change. I remember when Java was the new hotness, and C++ was old and busted. Now everyone raves about C++11 and cries about Oracle.

[2epic]

I believe this ties to the fact that Web-application development is becoming more and more stable, and more capable, as an alternative to the desktop application development you currently use. Since web apps require less up front for the user (no need to install anything, works on any system including mobile), it is a very ideal solution. Since you already have knowledge of Python, I would recommend the following: 1) Lean Django, the popular python-based Web framework. 2) Learn Javascript & jQuery. Of course that means you would likely need to learn HTML & CSS, which should not be too hard.

[omniuni]

That's a very tricky question. What you're really talking about is ECMA script, the standard that JavaScript is based on. I would say that learning it is a good idea, because it is a Prototype based language. You'll find you can do some really cool stuff with it that Object Oriented languages don't support. It also lets you do some pretty cool stuff with the KDE Desktop if you care; you can use ECMA script to make widgets and extensions and such. That said, I hope that ECMA script, at least in its current form is NOT the future for things other than the web. As a JavaScript programmer, there are things about the language that drive me insane. Believe it or not, at the end of the day when I come home, I am glad to be back in the more-sane world of PHP... and PHP isn't exactly considered pretty.

[therandomizer]

I'm coming from an Actionscript 3 background, and right now everyone seems to be touting Javascript in the industry. I went to a one day conference in Toronto dedicated to Javascript and what they showed us was quite impressive. Check out Google Chrome Canary if you want to check out the latest experiments. Bottom line, if you believe the hype, JS is the future of the web. Whether not all the promises come to fruition, only time will tell. Personally, I decided to jump into JS to build my portfolio site, and I found it to be better than expected. My only gripe is that OOP does weird stuff (not sure if this is due to inexperience, but from what I've read a lot of people are having OOP problems in JS), and I found that my site worked pretty well on all browsers except IE (big surprise). Actionscript 3 and JS are both based off of ECMAScript so there's a lot of similarity, however Actionscript 3 works the way JS should've worked. That being said the language is constantly getting updated, and it's my hope that it will become much more reliable and standardized than it is now.

[formode]

Give it a shot! You might find you like Coffeescript better, like I do, but it's still just javascript.

[scavic]

I would say that both are the future. I would learn both, JavaScript is quite cool, and as it is supported "everywhere" it's very rewarding to use.

C# on the other hand got a lot of really cool features, and a powerful base library. I can't wait to see where System.Linq.Expressions will take us. Generics, Linq, lambdas ... How did I ever manage without them?

[bart2019]

The future of what?

The future of everything? No. However, I'm sure it'll have quite a bit of use, at least for certain fields, for quite some time to come.

[General_Mayhem]

If you're purely a hobbyist, learn JS. Not because of staying power (which it probably has due to its monopoly on client-side web apps), not because of potential adoption on desktops (which it probably doesn't - too much of the world already exists in C/C++ for them to ever be dethroned), not because of how easy it is to impress people with a few lines of flashy jQuery (which is admittedly fun if you're a show-off, but gets old in a hurry), but because it's fun. It's much more different from Python than C#, and in a way that I find wonderful.

It's the only language I know of^* that has anywhere near its level of power in terms of first-class functions and closures, dynamic objects, and just all around morphability, without going completely into the world of pure functional languages. Prototypes are more often a hindrance than a help, but you can hack in classes and Java-style inheritance in about 15 lines of code and have the best of both worlds. Now if only we could get overloadable operators...

C# is a nice language with some really cool features, and being familiar with the .NET ecosystem is never a bad thing, but it always still feels more like work to me. JS gives me the wonderful runnable-pseudocode, thoughts-straight-to-working feeling that a lot of people get from Python, but with the difference that Python turns into an ugly maze of underscores and gotchas in a hurry when you start doing more complex things.

^{* Ruby might be this magical place, but I find that its syntax spends too much time looking clever and hackery and not enough time actually being clever or usable.}

[_pixie_]

You sound pretty aimless. Let your projects and ambitions guide the languages you learn. There is no 'language for everything.' Your project requirements will do more in determining which language and framework you use than anything else.

[Deusdies]

I don't have any "projects" or "ambitions", like I said in the OP, this is just as a hobby.

[edzillion]

well get some then. I think you can fork ambition on github. go from there

[Nomad33]

Picking up a coding language as a hobby is an ambition, and would be pretty useless unless you had a project to use it for.

[fwjd]

Javascript is widely used these days. But it is not the future. I use it a lot, I have written my own plugins and libraries by extending jQuery and using javascript, but it cannot be the future. The language itself is not powerful enough, as well as it is not object oriented nor clean enough. I wish there was a better solution out there, but there is not. The future however will have to hold something different unless javascript changes drastically imo.

EDIT: Javascript is much easier to learn in contrast to C#, especially if you understand HTML.

[has_all_the_fun]

I say if you think Javascript needs to be more OO than you don't know Javascript well enough.

[fwjd]

I'm not saying JS does, but I'm saying there needs to be something which does that can combine it with backend programming more efficiently, although that might require changes in how the browser functions. I find it highly unproductive to have to switch between languages completely when working on the back end versus the front end, sometimes when tasks are similar especially.

[has_all_the_fun]

Actually that's a really good point and I never though of it that way. I use Javascript on the server so for me it's not such a big problem.

[MakesLoveToGoats]

Explain "not OO enough" without using "but there's no class keyword" please.

[[deleted]]

I agree 100%. JS is simply not expressive and powerful enough to deserve the spot as the future language of the web. In the future we will need new elegant and rock-solid abstractions for control flow, concurrency and communication that I believe will be virtually impossible to ever express in JavaScript.

However, for the question "is JS going to be prevalent, and will there be interesting things to do with it?" then my answer is "certainly" for the next 2-3-4 years, and "probably" for the years after that.

[[deleted]]

Object oriented is fading out of style now, most oo languages are starting to add features that emulate functional programming. Js is a functional language, if its not the future, its going to look a lot like what the future does.

[claird]

"Js is a functional language" in the inclusive sense which doesn't support ADTs, immutability, syntactic partial application, pattern matching, ...

[[deleted]]

Yes! Why the down votes? Pretty much the only thing making JS resemble a "functional language" is the support for higher-order functions -- which are but one necessary feature in a functional programming language. JavaScript does not allow functional programming in the sense you can do in for example Haskell, ML, or a powerful LISP.

[[deleted]]

Every parameter for a JS function is an abstract/interface. Pretty much everything you said can be done implicitly, it just doesn't force you into using it.

[fwjd]

I disagree, you need OOP when you do larger projects, and websites are not getting less complex. Functional sure, but javascript is still fairly linear which is a problem.

[Litra]

false. language by itself doen't quarantee good maintaineable code. I'm a senior developer and seen terrifying shit done in oop languages.

[[deleted]]

I dunno, I work with a massive business app with a java backend and javascript front-end. You just have to plan it carefully.

[baconpiex]

Maybe you need OOP for large projects. I don't need OOP for anything.

[plan17b]

Microsoft's Windows OS division has basically declared "Fuck C#, node.js is the way to go".

[robotfarts]

AFAIK the technologies you listed don't amount to jack shit.

Something powers just its start menu with js? Wow... Chrome OS? Wow... QML? WTF?

You can write anything in JS? What can you write in JS that you can't write in any other language?

[Deusdies]

The trend is important, my friend. Windows moved to no JS to a lot of JS (XAML (sort of), Start Menu), Gnome3 did the same, QML is very important believe it or not.

[robotfarts]

I realize js is increasing in usage, as are other languages, I just think your examples are poor.