While true, there are some languages that are the wrong tool for every job. JS is one of them. I’ve dreamt of a future where web frontends switched to something sane but instead we got stuff like typescript which is like trying to erect steel beams in quicksand. For web frontends I can understand that historical reasons have lead to this but whoever came up with node thinking JS would be a great backend language has a lot of explaining to do.
I am also interested if anyone can tell me the exact time in our history when JavaScript turned from “Don’t you ever use that anywhere on your websites!” into “It’s basically every website”.
I happened to be a fullstack developer when the transition happened, so I saw it firsthand. I would say it predated V8 by a year or two. By the time V8 came out, I was already writing plenty of (simple) javascript for applications.
I would say it was more about plugged security holes and Ajax becoming more viable for real-world use. The “don’t ever use javascript” rule came from people disabling javascript because javascript was being used for malware. V8 was a part of that transition and growth, but at least in my memory not the shot that started it all.
There were developers pushing Rails+Ajax pretty hard in 2007, a full year before V8’s first release in September of 2008.
You’re right! I stand corrected and thank you for sharing. There were already big JS apps (notably, Gmail in 2004) before V8 came out. Yet, am I wrong to think Node.js started the JS obsession that lasted for a while?
While true, there are some languages that are the wrong tool for every job. JS is one of them. I’ve dreamt of a future where web frontends switched to something sane but instead we got stuff like typescript which is like trying to erect steel beams in quicksand. For web frontends I can understand that historical reasons have lead to this but whoever came up with node thinking JS would be a great backend language has a lot of explaining to do.
I’ve commented to my cow-orkers that “Typescript is the bag they put over Javascript’s face so you don’t have to look at it anymore.”
I am also interested if anyone can tell me the exact time in our history when JavaScript turned from “Don’t you ever use that anywhere on your websites!” into “It’s basically every website”.
XMLHttpRequest
It was when better sandboxing came out and the only valid complaints about javascript became invalid.
I was there. It was a good time.
Probably when V8 came out. Also Node.js.
I happened to be a fullstack developer when the transition happened, so I saw it firsthand. I would say it predated V8 by a year or two. By the time V8 came out, I was already writing plenty of (simple) javascript for applications.
I would say it was more about plugged security holes and Ajax becoming more viable for real-world use. The “don’t ever use javascript” rule came from people disabling javascript because javascript was being used for malware. V8 was a part of that transition and growth, but at least in my memory not the shot that started it all.
There were developers pushing Rails+Ajax pretty hard in 2007, a full year before V8’s first release in September of 2008.
You’re right! I stand corrected and thank you for sharing. There were already big JS apps (notably, Gmail in 2004) before V8 came out. Yet, am I wrong to think Node.js started the JS obsession that lasted for a while?