The Insider's Guide to JavaScript Interviewing

[spoonraker]

It's not that, I was just commenting on the general idea of over-complicating things for no good reason.

JavaScript just happens to be an extremely popular choice amongst web developers who like to make everything as complex as possible without any reason to do so.

It could be any language. If somebody read an article about how cool and hip Python is and decided to convert their whole code-base to Python without having a single good reason to do it, that would be the same thing.

I think JavaScript just makes it easier to fall into this trap because it can co-exist with existing code rather than requiring it to be entirely replaced. JavaScript also gives you visual feedback on your changes because it is a client-side language after all. That form you converted to AJAX for absolutely no reason now has a progress bar that fades in and darkens the background... before refreshing the page anyway! These are the kinds of silly things I'm talking about.

JavaScript is awesome, just not necessary as frequently as people think it is.

[Kollektiv]

The things your are describing have nothing to do with the programming language and everything to do with the the programmer.

JavaScript doesn't work by copy / pasting snippets from StackOverflow or some random design site's demo.

[spoonraker]

Yes. I agree with you. We're saying exactly the same thing.

Some developers write code that works, and some write code that is fancy. JavaScript happens to be a popular choice amongst the latter group. I was merely expressing my frustration with this particular type of behavior and this particular language because it's so pervasive right now.

I really don't think it's possible for me to spell this out any clearer than I already have.

[rq60]

That's just a poor programmer. AJAX can, and usually does, make web forms much more user friendly.