Should JavaScript Get More Respect?

An anonymous reader points out an article in IBM's Crossing Borders series about the language features of JavaScript, surely the Rodney Dangerfield of scripting languages. But with increasing use in such technologies as Ajax, Apache Cocoon, ActionScript, and Rhino, some industry leaders are taking a fresh look at the language. From the article: "Nearly every Web developer has cursed JavaScript at one time or another. Until recently, many developers had all but written off JavaScript as a necessary evil at best or a toy at worst... But JavaScript is becoming increasingly important, and it remains the most broadly available scripting language for Web development."

Re:Dense != Good

[MichaelSmith]

The author seems to equate dense with good, not an association I make

By that standard APL would be hard to beat.

Re:JS

[CmdrGravy]

25,000 lines of Javascript ? What could you possibly be doing which requires that level of Javascript interaction ?????

Re:Dense != Good

[D-Cypell]

The author seems to equate dense with good

The irony of this is so elegantly compact I am concern a singularity may form around the vacinity of this article.

Re:JS

[ignavus]

"25,000 lines of Javascript ? What could you possibly be doing which requires that level of Javascript interaction ?????"

document.write('25,000 bottles of beer on the wall, 25,000 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,999 bottles of beer on the wall');
document.write('24,999 bottles of beer on the wall, 24,999 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,998 bottles of beer on the wall');
document.write('24,998 bottles of beer on the wall, 24,998 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,997 bottles of beer on the wall');

etc ...

25000 lines:

[hummassa]

Any serious Ajax application.

Overlord

[Dude163299]

I for one Hate our new Javascript writing overlords.

And for the record im suppose to be writing various Javascript programs at this moment.

Re:JS

[mikek3332002]

document.write('25,000 bottles of beer on the wall, 25,000 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,999 bottles of beer on the wall');

A much better form for 25000 lines would be having, 12499 bottles of beer on the wall lines, an initlization statment, and a decremeant function after every write line. That way you can easily modify the code to start off with what ever number you want.

Re:JS

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, it's a good idea to Write and Save your JavaScript a Word document (eg in an editor like Notepad), not scrawled in Paintbrush and saved as a Bitmap File. It's funny how the Internet can't compile my Paintbrush Javascripts lol! My fried says thats how all the best programmers do it, but I can't get it work. maybe I don't get something? something vital? I think that must be it

Re:Dense != Good

[Rufty]

Dense *is* good. Suck all the bugs out of your code, you just need a perl regex with an event horizon.

Re:JS

[Anonymous Coward]

My sarcasm detector exploded. ow.

Re:JS

[walt-sjc]

25,000 lines of Javascript ? What could you possibly be doing which requires that level of Javascript interaction ?????

1000 lines of application code, and 24,000 lines of browser compatibility code.

Re:JS

[TheNinjaroach]

Maybe you could write a few more to catch the joke for you as well. =)

Re:Dense != Good

[x2A]

Absolutely. Everytime I need a new variable, I use the md5 checksum of the file at its current point. If I ever forget a variable name, I simple undo until the first time I put the variable in (I keep vim open ALL the time, and never exit) and run md5 on it again. Simple.

Re:JS

[Anonymous Coward]

Super, that will loop forever printing out i as 1 ;)

Re:JS

[CastrTroy]

try{
tellJoke();
}
catch(JokeException e)
{
printf("joke wasn't funny");
}

Re:JS

[hobo sapiens]

I only had 3 lines.

Yeah, 3 lines and an endless loop. You meant:

for(var i=25000;i>0;i--)
document.write((i + ' bottles of beer on the wall,' + i + ' bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around ' + (i-1) + ' bottles of beer on the wall\n');

Dude, this is slashdot. You can't be posting endless loops like that, that could be dangerous! Have you any idea how many geeks will be frozen in front of their computers until they involuntarily fall asleep?

Javascript is the BB gun of Christmas Toys.

[Twixter]

Man is it fun; and useful! But sooner or later, you end up shooting your eye out.

//Create new Human
var human = new Object();
var ass = new Object();
var head = new Object();

//Assign properties to human
human.ass = ass;
human.head = head;

//Elect human to office.
human.ass.head = head;

Perfectly valid in Javascript, and in the real world.

Re:JS

[dlim]

dude. you're putting the bottles back on the wall. that makes no sense at all...

Re:JS

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you remember to include the ocr object into your workspace before attempting to compile?

Re:Security is a problem

[chudnall]

You're welcome to all the thousands of lines of JS code our company produces, where would you like me to mail it to?

[e-mail]