onpaws · March 25, 2020 13:35
diff --git a/why-javascript b/why-javascript
 Why JavaScript?

 Main strengths:
 * The ecosystem is pretty strong and constantly evolving. Lots of companies and individuals are putting a serious amount of work into making high-quality tooling and libraries. (Although with that also comes a lot of lower quality stuff and its sometimes hard to tell)

 * The language isn't owned by any single company and is well specified

 * TypeScript provides a powerful and flexible type system with advanced dependant-types like features. Lets you gradually evolve from a messy JS prototype to well-organized code with fairly strict type checking

 * Fastest dynamic language. The performance is also quite comparable to statically typed GCed languages. (For example, you can probably get to 50%-90% of Java performance on most single-threaded workloads)

 * wasm support in the runtime a promising escape hatch to the integration with other languages should that become needed. (Similarly not owned by a single company and well-specified)

 * sharing code and types between client and server, including interfaces, validation and data models.

 * particularly well suited to handling heterogeneous structured data due to how cheap it is to define new object types (even in typescript)

 * Async-IO-first (in fact, async-only IO for the most part)

 Main weaknesses:

 * Poor standard library with an anemic set of classes, anemic set of implementable protocols/interfaces (more stuff like Symbol.asyncIterable needed) and lacking convenience functions. E.g. see https://api.dart.dev/stable/2.7.1/dart-async/Stream-class.ht... and compare with... well nothing in the language! The official node streams have a terrible API.

 * Combining lack of both protocols and standard library leads to pretty bad userspace library fragmentation. (What is the go-to stream library?)

 * Restricted data sharing between threads (only SharedArrayBuffer) makes it quite limited for multi-threaded problems.

 * (mainly TypeScript) - Insufficient reflection capabilities

 * Rigid (non-configurable) node_modules resolution algorithm accepted as standard limits flexibility when organizing projects

 Mythical weaknesses that don't matter that much:

 * Implicit conversions - largely irrelevant since TypeScript

 * DOM/Browser related weirdness - often attributed to the language but actually problems with browser APIs
	Why JavaScript?

	Main strengths:
	* The ecosystem is pretty strong and constantly evolving. Lots of companies and individuals are putting a serious amount of work into making high-quality tooling and libraries. (Although with that also comes a lot of lower quality stuff and its sometimes hard to tell)

	* The language isn't owned by any single company and is well specified

	* TypeScript provides a powerful and flexible type system with advanced dependant-types like features. Lets you gradually evolve from a messy JS prototype to well-organized code with fairly strict type checking

	* Fastest dynamic language. The performance is also quite comparable to statically typed GCed languages. (For example, you can probably get to 50%-90% of Java performance on most single-threaded workloads)

	* wasm support in the runtime a promising escape hatch to the integration with other languages should that become needed. (Similarly not owned by a single company and well-specified)

	* sharing code and types between client and server, including interfaces, validation and data models.

	* particularly well suited to handling heterogeneous structured data due to how cheap it is to define new object types (even in typescript)

	* Async-IO-first (in fact, async-only IO for the most part)

	Main weaknesses:

	* Poor standard library with an anemic set of classes, anemic set of implementable protocols/interfaces (more stuff like Symbol.asyncIterable needed) and lacking convenience functions. E.g. see https://api.dart.dev/stable/2.7.1/dart-async/Stream-class.ht... and compare with... well nothing in the language! The official node streams have a terrible API.

	* Combining lack of both protocols and standard library leads to pretty bad userspace library fragmentation. (What is the go-to stream library?)

	* Restricted data sharing between threads (only SharedArrayBuffer) makes it quite limited for multi-threaded problems.

	* (mainly TypeScript) - Insufficient reflection capabilities

	* Rigid (non-configurable) node_modules resolution algorithm accepted as standard limits flexibility when organizing projects

	Mythical weaknesses that don't matter that much:

	* Implicit conversions - largely irrelevant since TypeScript

	* DOM/Browser related weirdness - often attributed to the language but actually problems with browser APIs