Re: basic BASIC question

In article <vo2mhs$30u76$1@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 2/6/2025 10:24 AM, Dan Cross wrote:

In article <67a4cc2d$0$708$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 2/3/2025 1:24 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On 2025-01-31, Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:

If you really want to have a good time, look at how
JavaScript deals with this.  Things aren't just true
or false, they're truthy and falsy, and sometimes Nan.
>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8xNAc2ic8

>
And we use this crap to build critical websites that our society and
general way of life now depend on. :-(
>
And some even think it's a good idea to run this server-side. :-(

>
JavaScript has had a huge market share in presentation layer
in web applications for decades.
>
Either companies don't know how to profit maximize or
JavaScript is/was a good choice for this type
of code.

 
Server side Javascript does not run on the browser.
 

Small code bases, frequent releases and high user
tolerance for small ooopses favor a language like
JavaScript. Ada would not work well in this context
from a business perspective.
>
Code bases are not small anymore though. And TypeScript
has taken huge chunks of market share from
JavaScript in recent years.

 
Typescript is a better language.  JavaScript should
have been better than it was, but that shippe has sailed,
and the story has been told many times: it was ten days
from conception to ship, and the consequent lack of
polish shows.

>
If JavaScript was unique in the web frontend world
for lack of type safety, then the lack of type safety
could be due to its history.

I didn't say anything about types, other than that TypeScript is
a better language than JavaScript.  TypeScript is a better
language; typing is of course part of that, but not the only
part.

But it is not unique. Other popular languages like
PHP and Python also has a relaxed approach to types.
Past popular languages like Perl and VBS same.
Web frontend is not like backend or embedded.

Non-sequitor: none of this has to do with why JavaScript is a
poor language.

PHP, by the way, is a horrible langauge; worse than JavaScript.
https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

None of this is to say that these things are not _useful_;
they undeniably are.  That doesn't mean that they are _good_.

- Dan C.