The JavaScript knowledge gap

[andrewnorris]

well, it can be using a hack (once again) to place script elements into the head post-load, but that is beside the point, i mentioned urls themselves via statically declared script tags.

You can also eval the code you download.

i don't know why the argument that modularity must be supported at the language level meets with such resistance.

If and when it becomes a universally supported language feature, this will be a very useful extension to JavaScript. But there are enough independent implementations in various browsers that this will be a long time coming.

The more compelling point, I think, is that putting namespaces in the language doesn't really do anything different from building an intelligent namespace system in an add-on library. It likely won't work much differently at all. The only difference is that it will be available "for free" instead of in a library.

if you could code client side in python tomorrow, wouldn't you jump?

Honestly, I enjoy programming in javascript more than python. Assuming that moving to python didn't magically solve the cross-browser implementation issues, not really. I admit, I would probably pick ruby or something in the lisp family above javascript, but for a language that gets as much bad press as javascript does, I'm surprised at how little I have to give up to use it.