Can you conceive the existence of a language that has got some parts wrong, and maybe awfully wrong?
Well, my point, and that of a lot of others, including Cockford and Eich, is that Javascript is such a language. And that the fucked-up scope it has, is one of such parts.
JavaScript I not c. JavaScript is not Java. JavaScript is not python. If it was one of those languages it would be named that and there would be no JavaScript books, just dom and browser books. But it is not those languages. It is different. If people don't learn the language they cannot be expected to write code.
People don't want Javascript to be Python, C, or Java. The want it to be a better Javascript and shed some of the BS that was added at its' conception due to a tight deadline. Being "different" than other languages is OK. Being brain damaged is not.
People must learn the language, but that doesn't mean they have to put up with mistakes in its' design and not correct them. Just like people corrected bad stuff in K&R C with ANSI C, Python with Python 3, Ruby with 1.9, etc.
You seem to have the wrong impression that people complaining are lazy programmers who don't want to bother to learn the language. They are not. Brendan Eich is a JS guru and implementer. Douglas Cockford invented the damn language! And he admitted that there are bad parts in it, that need to be corrected. He even made a book on how to work around those, called "Javascript, the good parts".
People always bring up var for some reason. Why var? Why not closures? Javascript is often the first place programmers come across this concept and it always causes confusion and bugs at first. Should we get rid of them? Of course not!
Because discussing what must be corrected is not about whether it's confusing to newcomers of not, it's about whether something is nicely designed OR a kludgy disaster.
Closures, while confusing to some, are a standard programming feature and a nice addition to Javascript. In contrast, var (and JS's scope rules) are just things that the JS creator gotten wrong. They need to be corrected.
"People don't want Javascript to be Python, C, or Java. The want it to be a better Javascript and shed some of the BS that was added at its' conception."
That's a great idea. I'd be all for shedding some of the bs for a better javascript. But the var issue isn't being solved by shedding anything. Var will still be there. But now the language will be even more complicated because of some var workarounds being added in. In the end, you still need to deal with var.
Can you conceive the existence of a language that has got some parts wrong, and maybe awfully wrong?
Well, my point, and that of a lot of others, including Cockford and Eich, is that Javascript is such a language. And that the fucked-up scope it has, is one of such parts.
JavaScript I not c. JavaScript is not Java. JavaScript is not python. If it was one of those languages it would be named that and there would be no JavaScript books, just dom and browser books. But it is not those languages. It is different. If people don't learn the language they cannot be expected to write code.
People don't want Javascript to be Python, C, or Java. The want it to be a better Javascript and shed some of the BS that was added at its' conception due to a tight deadline. Being "different" than other languages is OK. Being brain damaged is not.
People must learn the language, but that doesn't mean they have to put up with mistakes in its' design and not correct them. Just like people corrected bad stuff in K&R C with ANSI C, Python with Python 3, Ruby with 1.9, etc.
You seem to have the wrong impression that people complaining are lazy programmers who don't want to bother to learn the language. They are not. Brendan Eich is a JS guru and implementer. Douglas Cockford invented the damn language! And he admitted that there are bad parts in it, that need to be corrected. He even made a book on how to work around those, called "Javascript, the good parts".
People always bring up var for some reason. Why var? Why not closures? Javascript is often the first place programmers come across this concept and it always causes confusion and bugs at first. Should we get rid of them? Of course not!
Because discussing what must be corrected is not about whether it's confusing to newcomers of not, it's about whether something is nicely designed OR a kludgy disaster.
Closures, while confusing to some, are a standard programming feature and a nice addition to Javascript. In contrast, var (and JS's scope rules) are just things that the JS creator gotten wrong. They need to be corrected.