Comments by "Kristopher Driver" (@paxdriver) on "JavaScript might become two languages (and it's dramatic)" video.

  1. J++ is coming, Mark my words.
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  2. CSS is as incomprehensible as it is today because of trying to grow features for the sake of growth. Many css additions are vital like transitions and variables, but how many people have actually memorized the right object-fit keywords, or the difference between static and relative position until they try both to make sure? It's so great to have css, but it's so unbelievably impossible to write it by hand without ide tools now and javascript is getting to be similarly convoluted when we have to memorize which js is universal, browser-specific, or if it conflicts with a particular bundle, maybe server, framework, or bugs/vulnerabilities with polyfills? I may just be old, but I seriously believe js needs to slow down and plug gaps. Build new features on the new language for people who need to tie new features into a browser script. JavaScript is really really good and tying into other systems, just put those specific niche new features in a new language that's built with them in mind (like Pyscript), it's way easier for everyone to learn a Python implementation of a new feature than it is to change the whole language to shoehorn it in. Serverside javascript is wonderful for those of us who learned js 25 years ago, but it's a mess for someone starting from scratch I would imagine. Would've been so much easier if express was in Python and javascript just linked to an interconnect api because Python is just easier to apply new modules to, and those modules can be standardized in chunks and in lower level languages for performance. Programmers today are constantly building layers of abstraction to organize code bases but the language for some reason just sprawls incessantly like they think it'll die if it just stops changing for a bit so that standards can for organically. I really don't understand what is so lacking of a web browser scripting language that the thing needs to keep growing. I'm not saying they've done a bad job at all, I'm just saying there's a point in which it doesn't make sense to do more when we're already leveraging markup, parsing virtual DOMs and diff-ing in between event loops and css computations - drawing and reporting precise paints and performing all these api connections between technologies. It's a great intermediary language, I don't see how expanding it while it's still bleeding from past scabs helps anything when there exist alternative approaches that javascript could readily plug into instead of building it itself. Maybe I'm old and too novice to understand neo-modernity lol as coders we reduce and simplify, but with languages we spread eagle before mopping up from the last round of features added in. It may make 2 devs lives easier when they copy-paste templated code anyway, but for every generation that comes next who has to learn specifics like "bind(this) but not with arrow functions" it's actually worse for everyone who isn't already fully committed to the language. It doesn't help the language making it harder to learn the trade for benefits few will realize and none can measure imho
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  3. Why are we even trying to perfect javascript with expanding the language when we still haven't developed consistency for the language as it already is? It won't stop innovation because frameworks do fine on top of js; modules for a prime example. It will never be as solid as rust, that's never been it's strength anyway. Its versatility is always going to make it vulnerable, but as the language gets more specific and complex and becomes less script-y. Pyscript could easily fill this language gap, while we leave js to close existing vulnerabilities just apply any language specifics from what we learned from js and make Pyscript that new programming language for browsers, with packages and imports and all that good stuff. JavaScript can't be made into Rust by brute force, and the language is already so powerful nobody is losing sleep about what they can't do in javascript... That's just not a thing. If you need more from js, build it for Pyscript or wasm instead. I don't understand this obsession with constant language growth, hardly anybody uses most of javascript's built-ins already. Proposals should be fixing what's already here, we don't have to constantly introduce new features when scripts are best as connections to API's as opposed to being the api itself.
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