Andrew James Francis if we're including confirmation names :D

JavaScript is so much more than just another C-like scripting language.

It shares (more-or-less) the brace-based syntax, but JS is functional and prototype-based, neither of which C is (nor its crappy successors).

C++, C#, Java and PHP all implement stupid class-based OO (which I hope the world will eventually realise is a big turd), and everyone who has experienced first-class functions, closures, etc wishes their own language had those features.

Unity uses JavaScript as its primary language - it's what the docs are written for. (Whilst C# and Boo are two alternatives.)

Similarly, Qt might provide connectors for everything under the sun, but its default/internal scripting language is JavaScript.

People are starting to use JavaScript outside of browsers because of the realisation that it's a reasonable language and that it shouldn't be held responsible for the mess the retarded browser manufacturers made of things.

And that's why I'm arguing with you - just because 99.9% of JS involves the DOM doesn't mean that JS is tied to it. It's only a niche at the moment, but it's a growing one, and in a few more years it'll probably be as popular off the DOM as on it.


Oh and Chrome is not going to displace Firefox.

Might end up with a bigger market share, but it's certainly not going to kill it off.

WTF? "Joseph" and "James Francis"? Is that it?

Fucking Lightweights.

I got more middle names than both of you put together. :P

QtScript is based on ECMAScript primarily so is again a sibling rather than a child of javascript. Unityscript is only very very loosely based on JS. And regardless, they're still very niche uses.

As I said, I don't think JS on the server is a bad idea, just a stupid one. PHP works fine. If you don't like that then Ruby or Python work fine too. If you don't like that then Perl works fine. If you're a masochist then there's server side java. If you feel the need to pay more money to people then there's all the MS server side stuff. And there is of course coldfusion, which isn't very good.

Of course choice is good - the more the merrier. Except that in order to be useful a language needs to be installed when I buy a webserver. Or on my clients' webservers which they already tend to have which tend to be the most default setup imaginable. When server side JS is stable, secure and ubiquitous enough to be in those setups then I will begin to become interested. Until then I choose to dismiss it as the prattling of people who fetishise difference for the sake of difference.



It kinda does, yeah. Like if we're having a discussion about the uses of petrol and you want to talk only about lawnmowers and chainsaws and ignore cars.



No, it won't. It'll have a short lived ascendancy while it's trendy and then people will forget about it. Sure it will be included more often as a choice of interpreted languages in stuff like Qt - and that's a good thing. But it won't go further than that. It's not going to usurp all the other choices and become pre-eminent. If anything was going to do that it would be good old python. It's primary use will remain client-side web stuff for the foreseeable future (increasingly so with html5).

Chrome ending up with a bigger market share than FF is the very definition of killing it off. Mozilla will never die, few large open source projects ever completely die. But when it's down to under 10% share it'll be irrelevant as, frankly, it deserves to be. It was a great browser for a while but then they started making some very odd decisions and let Google in the back door. Which is a shame because I'd rather have a genuinely free/open project be on top.

Come on then Peeb, what are your middle names? Can you beat Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso?

I'm in bed now and can't be bothered responding to all that, except to say that Python has/had no chance because it confuses/scares too many people.

Firefox will always have more functionality than Chrome, because it's built by/for people who want that, whilst Chrome sacrifices functionality for simplicity and speed.
It wont become irrelevant all the while Chrome's developer tools remain shite and awkward compared to Firebug.

See now what you've done, you've set me off again. :@

I'm putting this down and going to sleep.

No.

Nor that Wolfgang guy either.

And I aint telling. :P

TELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

Heh, I was agreeing with you, more or less, up til this post.

I don't think Python has "no chance", more that it will remain a niche product. Don't forget, Google are heavily invested into Python: a significant amount of their server-side code is written in it. That said, the popularity of Python frameworks like Django is still much less than Rails, and that itself is a smaller slice of the pie than PHP, so while I don't think Python will ever die off, nor do I think it will ever become as popular as Ruby, PHP or JavaScript.

I also don't think saying "Firefox will always have more functionality than Chrome" is the same thing at all as saying "Firefox will always remain relevant". You appear to be making the classic mistake most geeks make, in that you're assuming that functionality, extensibility and choice is what most people want. It's not. Most people who use the internet don't give two hoots about that, they just want to search on Google, read stuff on Wikipedia, buy stuff from Amazon, and maybe post on a forum or two. Simplicity and speed is precisely what they want. Most of them don't even know what a browser is, and it's only through Google's massive advertising efforts that Chrome has any relevance at all outside the tech world.

As for Chrome's Dev Tools, well, I kinda prefer Chrome for my work over Firefox and Firebug, mostly because after a while Firefox starts pushing my CPU to 100% a lot even for simple things like DOM operations, and also because it's faster. There are a few things Firebug does that I sometimes need, and in such cases I'll use it, but mostly I work better with Chrome.

I didn't say Python would die - I said it wouldn't usurp all other choices. (Though I didn't say JS would do that either.)


All those people you're talking about using Chrome are generally not the main Firefox userbase; they're mostly IE users.
I'm pointing out that people using Firefox are doing so for the plugins and configurability - there's no compelling reason for them to step backwards into a less-flexible browser - and so Firefox is going to stay around.

As I think I said - Mozilla didn't let Chrome in the backdoor, because they're aimed at didn't types of people.

My wife uses FireFox. It's not the only thing she's wrong about, nor the most serious.

Er, there is no server side.
I'm calculating a price and showing it in the browser, everything is done client side.

If it's a thing where you can order stuff that's probably a bad idea, if it's just for information you can probably get away with it.

Her choice in men is a bit dodgy ;-)

I know what you mean...the fathers of her two daughters for starters! :Y

Definitely just for info only. It's not even something that's likely to go outside the team, just being written as a sort of learning experience.

The proportion of users who care about the things that you can configure in FF which you can't in Chrome is going to be so tiny as to be insignificant. And Chrome has plugins/addons/whatever, I don't know where you arrived at a belief otherwise.

Chrome is good in exactly the ways in which FF was good when it was good. It's lightweight and fast without lacking in customisability. Those were the reasons people jumped from IE to FF and they are the same reasons people (the vast majority of) will jump from FF to Chrome. Alongside the continued steady trickle of not-technically-minded people who realise they don't have to use IE.

I used Firefox when it was better. I'm hardly a typical IE user. I may not be as techy as you, but I make websites for a living and use the web a lot. And I jumped to Chrome when it became better than FF. Caer is more techy than me and he did the same. I think this group of users you're describing is largely imaginary.

On the odd occasion when I have to use FF now it feels... almost as bad as using IE.

But this browser-jumpiing/-savvy demographic is hardly representative of the majority though, is it?

 

That majority may be luddites, but they're the luddites that your web sites have to appeal to (unless you build intranets/extranets, or demographically controlled/restricted sites).

 

(What happens when Chrome becomes like FireFox?)

I think if someone uses not-IE they've already demonstrated their willingness to go elsewhere if something better comes along.

And when Chrome goes the way of FF something else will come along. Maybe even Opera 8-O

And FF's numbers are starting to fall. Up to this point it does seem that Chrome has been taking uses from IE (assuming it's as simple as the stats suggest and not something weird like IE->FF->Chrome). But yeah, the past few months have seen FF's numbers falling too.

I still use FF, cos I hate Chrome.