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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof: :Nonbinary:"):
joepie91@slightly.tech ("Sven Slootweg, ("still kinky and horny anyway")") wrote:
there's this thing where over the past decade, JS (as a language) has become the cool thing to hate on, and it's widely derided. it also happens to be the primary language I use, and for very good but non-obvious reasons that *should* resonate with many of the same people complaining about it, if they cared to listen.
but then when I try to bring this up, and ask people why they have such a problem with JS, often the response is something like "it sucks to work in" or "the libraries are crap" or "stuff keeps breaking" or whatever else, and every time I *really* try to dig into it more, it ends up at some variant of "there are quality problems with the library ecosystem around it".
which yeah, there are. only in specific corners of JS, but sure, those *are* the corners you're most likely to end up in if you're new to the language, so it's fair to be frustrated by that. and if that were all it was, that'd be fine. but instead, it grows into a sort of ideological thing where JS isn't just "a language I dislike", but some sort of abstract evil of programming. and it becomes about dogma and misleading memes, instead of genuine criticism.
and then here is me, and I'm putting in a ton of design and implementation work to fix the parts of the JS landscape that really *do* just suck, and to better document the parts that don't (but are just hard to find). and then when I present that work, *at best* I get crickets because people aren't using JS, but often I get some shitty low-effort comment about how terrible JS is that doesn't engage with the work at all. often there isn't even any attempt to engage with the underlying subject matter or theory that, for the most part, isn't JS-specific - just because it's in the context of JS.
and like, how do you think that makes me feel? what do you think that does to my motivation to fix these problems? for which I am *absolutely not* getting paid even a little bit?
you complain about JS, but how do you expect anything to ever get fixed if this is the way you engage with those doing that work?
and you might think "well why don't you present it to people who do use JS instead, and then other people can join in later once it's better". but like, have you looked at software development lately? AI boosters are suffocating every community and space, and there's precious few spaces left where people do actually genuinely care about their craft. let alone ones that I can access.
so yeah, a JS community that cares about its craft and that isn't overrun by slopbros or locked away on discord. that'd be nice. how about you let me know when you find one, because I'm tired of fighting wars on two fronts at the same time.