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Re: JavaScript unfairly blamed?

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  Re: JavaScript unfairly blamed? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2014-01-26 11:37 +0100

#22793 — Re: JavaScript unfairly blamed?

Stefan Ram wrote:

>   Douglas Crockford wrote:
> 
> |The API Of the browser, the Document Object Model (DOM) is
> |quite awful, and JavaScript is unfairly blamed.
> 
>   What's so awful about the DOM?

IMCO, not much.  Only the number of arguments required to initialize an 
event comes to mind as a bad example for an API.

Perhaps this statement was made before certain improvements to the W3C DOM 
were made, like the “textContent” property in Level 3.  It may also allude 
to the various DOM implementations instead, which consist not only of 
features from the W3C DOM, and are, if viewed as a whole, inconsistent for 
historical reasons.

Neither does the API of browsers consist merely of the DOM, nor is the DOM 
merely an API used in browsers.

Douglas Crockford present himself to be an expert of programming languages, 
but has demonstrated a lack of understanding regarding their application in 
script programming in browsers.  So not too much weight should be put on his 
opinions outside his designated area.  Indeed, while he has made some 
valuable contributions to the field, in particular JSON, and as it is 
commonly held (but yet without evidence), the Module Pattern, even several 
of his notions on programming languages, and “JavaScript” as he 
(mis)understands it (as one language everywhere), in particular, are 
contested.

Of course, similar things could be said about other people, including me.  
However, it appears to me that Crockford's opinions are often strong, and 
address the emotions of his audience, but are seldom well-founded and 
logically sound.  He shares this quality with several other book authors, 
which might be an explanation why those books are popular among beginners 
but no book on the topic has received a “good” review here yet (the best 
outcome so far was “not so bad as the others”).  We can see an example of 
that here: He calls “the DOM” “awful” but gives no reason as to his opinion 
at all, and talks about “JavaScript” as it was a universal implementation, 
leaving the reader to speculate on what he meant.

-- 
PointedEars

Twitter: @PointedEars2
Please do not Cc: me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail.

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