[thelist] Why history will repeat itself with JavaScript andthe web | Technology | The Guardian

[Matt Warden]

On 10/30/07, Joel D Canfield <joel at streamliine.com> wrote:
> I'll just be sitting here, waiting for Spolsky's NewSDK ;)

I like Joel (both of you), but actually, I think he is pretty far off
the mark on this one as well.

Maybe writing his own language ends up benefiting him from a
cost-benefit perspective, but that's hard to believe. The
optimizations would have to be so severe that the benefits outweigh
the increased documentation requirements (needed to overcome the
readability gap due to the foreign language), the ramp-up time for new
employees (this has to really hurt his internship return), etc.

But, whatever; you're right; if he is successful as he is, he must be
doing something right. But, that doesn't by implication mean that he
is right about JavaScript.

As for the comments about an ajax SDK, is he really telling us
something about the future? We're in the middle of a library war, and
many of these libraries are rather extensive and clearly aiming toward
development of a platform (e.g., YUI). Are we precompiling JavaScript
yet? No, but that shows nothing except that the SDKs are sticking to
what is possible to accomplish right now. Look at something like this,
and try to tell me that if it were possible in browsers to run
compiled JS, they wouldn't be doing it already:
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html We're waiting on
browser development, not a bright idea from Joel.

And the Google Doom story is obligatory; he wouldn't get as many links
to his blog post without it.

-- 
Matt Warden
Cincinnati, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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