thats a good distinction, and i suppose its defensible. but imagine you are a trumpet player, and a pianist walks by and says "i hate that non-instrument trumpet" unprovoked. no one is wrong to hate the trumpet. but saying it to a trumpet player, and then saying they aren't even a musician (implied by "non-language"), is going to catch heat.
and its undeniably true that javascript has got loads of warts. i mean, look no further than "javascript: the good parts" as perhaps the most recommended book. (i guess you already know this, but for the maybe 1 other person reading this...) but despite that, i enjoy the hell out of writing good js, and love that people can use what you make by going to web page. and w/r/t the warts, i feel that if they were corrected, my js life woulnd't change much at all. so when people point to the warts as evidence that its a bad language, all i can say is that while they are obviously bad, they dont end up mattering to me. thats clearly not true of everyone, but id bet its true alot. because of this, i find it pretty easy to spot people who are excited to hate js because they are pretty sure its a safe thing to hate and it will make them look in the know. i mean, i was guilty of this when i was younger with mysql and php.
and yes, people being "forced" to use js is surely contributing to the hate, probably the same way people hate having to use css. they look at them as afterthoughts, but its funny because in a lot of cases, its like the main thing that needs work. i just wonder why people cling to the idea that "real programming" has a certain look, when being good at js and css is super helpful and important to good web projects.
i suppose we are arguing for the same thing- basically open-mindedness and willingness to learn.
Two days after you two posted this thread of comments, and I must thank you for it.
The analogy of musical instruments may be appropriate here; I feel that my ability or failure to be productive with a particular set of tools to be an aspect of my identity.
Set me to debugging a C++ or Java class library and I can get to work, but these may not be the tools I would prefer to start with.
Am I a bad programmer? Hmm. Identity can be a fragile thing.
and its undeniably true that javascript has got loads of warts. i mean, look no further than "javascript: the good parts" as perhaps the most recommended book. (i guess you already know this, but for the maybe 1 other person reading this...) but despite that, i enjoy the hell out of writing good js, and love that people can use what you make by going to web page. and w/r/t the warts, i feel that if they were corrected, my js life woulnd't change much at all. so when people point to the warts as evidence that its a bad language, all i can say is that while they are obviously bad, they dont end up mattering to me. thats clearly not true of everyone, but id bet its true alot. because of this, i find it pretty easy to spot people who are excited to hate js because they are pretty sure its a safe thing to hate and it will make them look in the know. i mean, i was guilty of this when i was younger with mysql and php.
and yes, people being "forced" to use js is surely contributing to the hate, probably the same way people hate having to use css. they look at them as afterthoughts, but its funny because in a lot of cases, its like the main thing that needs work. i just wonder why people cling to the idea that "real programming" has a certain look, when being good at js and css is super helpful and important to good web projects.
i suppose we are arguing for the same thing- basically open-mindedness and willingness to learn.