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links for 2006-08-05

rev="post-286" 2 Comments

Categories: Links.

By cote
— August 5, 2006 at 2:22 am
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2 Responses

  1. Re: Server Side Javascript

    "Meh" — I can see why people who are forced to use monolithic languages ala Java are so excited about SSJS but I don't see the value anywhere else. Most of the arguments I've seen are: JS hashes are almost the same as LangX hashes! Type conversion is simply one or two regexps away!

    If you want to use anything but primitive types now you need something more complex. Maybe it'll have some sort of interface definition language, or maybe it wont. Now you either have some second element to update anytime you make changes or you run into the happy world type-guessing. XMLRPC is pretty okay, for example, if you are going from a strict to a loosely typed language, say Java to Perl. Going the other direction doesn't work so well.

    Or maybe folks are thinking a step farther, let's send Javascript code blocks to the Server where it will run them. Sure, interesting. Java did this in the mid 90s and still does though it's pretty much proven to be not as cool as it sounded. Why? How do you automatically secure code provided by some one else? Sure, you could use a sandbox but sooner or later any security afforded by a sandbox will be comprimised. Most likely during crunch time, when something needs to work "now" no matter what rather than "correctly, when it's done".

    mhat — August 5, 2006 @ 8:05 am —

  2. I think your concerns are all quite valid.
    Most of my “JavaScript is good” thinking is using it in gray/glue areas like configuration, servlets, and other area where you just want to do a little bit of coding over resources (in the REST sense) without having to get all heavy weight.
    Being less conservative, I would like to see it used as a “first order language” more than more. I’m not a big fan of strong typing and — probably from my Mesa/FX days — I tend to reduce everything down to hash/maps/key=value pairs…so the loose and quick world of dynamic languages is attractive to me.
    And, yeah, I agree there’s a lot of “filling out” to be done with JavaScript — security, interfaces, etc. All these things are trade-offs to be made.
    Ideally, you could use JavaScript and Java (or and SomeRealLanguage). But, coders (at least the packaged apps area I’ve spent time in) seem to detest multilanguage applications in favor of having one language plus XHTML and XML.
    Getting back to glue-area: I see JavaScript, run in a sandbox, being a great script option for applications along the lines of being able to “shell out” or exec.

    Cote' — August 8, 2006 @ 10:58 am —