I still hate JavaScript
Wednesday December 24, 2008
I know, it's anathema to be a Web developer in this age of Ajax and fancy DHTML pages and hate JavaScript, but I admit it, I do. Luckily as SitePoint points out, Dreamweaver CS4 has a number of features that make writing JavaScript, I won't say fun, but at least less hair-rendingly annoying. I find the Live View most useful, as it can tell me when something isn't going to work before I upload it to the server and rip out another chunk of hair. I consider that a nice present from Adobe.
Comments
Would rather work with PHP or Perl. Javascript makes no sense to me.
Loony-Tunes language. I think programmers were threatened by BASIC, since it was more or less logical and simple enough for everybody, so invented the C family of languages with the weird syntax and curly braces so only the high priests of the temple could fathom the secrets and make money.
I have never found anything so hard for my brain to accept. Getting Quantum Physics (yes I have studied that) to stick in my head is easier than javascript. My brian wants to throw it away like nothing I’ve ever come across. Hate feels like a mild word….
Jenn,
You and I started a little over ten years ago, when JavaScript was pretty much the only way to do anything interesting (remember when Netscape 3 finally came out with Math.random support?)
I spent 10 years developing client side doodads and apps at netsperience 1.0 at GeoCities Free Hosting.
I still use a lot of JavaScript along with my PHP/MySQL code (often using plain JS instead of AJAX, and reducing server requests).
I use a text editor with a preview feature to test my JS before uploading it (I need to start xampp to check the PHP)
I wouldn’t touch Dreamweaver with a ten-foot pole, have no use for CS4 (I use the Gimp for the simple image editing I need, and to view PSDs from designers).
JavaScript has a very important place in web dev as it is secure and operates in the client browser.
Recently, I had to capture the top.location href of a page using a masking URL (in other words, framed) but top.location.href didn’t work, neither did PHP $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] (it always bugs me that in PHP it has 3 R’s and referrer in JS has 4) – anyway I could set the top window location with a cookie in JS with document.referrer and pick it up later using PHP and it worked – thanks to JS!