Re: Javascript: Time Traveller From the Year 1962!

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From: David Champion
Subject: Re: Javascript: Time Traveller From the Year 1962!
Date: 04:04 on 09 Apr 2005
* On 2005.04.08, in <20050409020736.GA6183@xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx.xxx>,
*	"Michael G Schwern" <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> wrote:
> Its the sort of language you DO write I/O drivers in.  I might throw 
> something like Forth into that pile.  Javascript or Lua do not go in there.
> They are modern, high level languages designed to be run in environments
> where I/O has already been taken care of for them... probably in C.

These are strange examples, to me, because like Forth, both Javascript
and Lua are both designed to be embeddable, and targetted to be
embedded. It seems reasonable, to me, to expect the host device/platform
(whether this is implemented in hardware or software) to provide the
basic I/O facilities. Web browsers indeed do this, via HTML <script>
tags and DOM gimmicks and such.

You might not like the way the host platform does this, and I wouldn't
blame you for a moment, 'cause frankly I hate the way web browsers,
hallucinogenically-misbegotten nightmares that they are, do just about
everything, but it's not a fault of the language.

I never thought I'd be a Javascript apologist. What have I done to
deserve this?


> Additionally, C was written in 1972.  Back then they were still figuring the
> basics out.  Its 2005 now.  We've learned a few things about I/O in the last 
> THIRTY YEARS.  Here in the year 2005 we have a pretty good idea about how 
> I/O should work (in part because of the pain C went through).  At least 

I dunno. Granted, I've only been doing this stuff for about 20 years,
and "seriously" for less than that, but I think your perspective here is
a little tinted, or tilted. It's not like 1972 was the dark ages. They'd
been compiling things for a couple of decades, and had rapidly-evolving
I/O *devices* to deal with -- that surely counts for something in the
quality of their understanding of I/O, and I think they knew a few
things about I/O then.

There certainly have been, shall we say -- and you can shoot me for this
when I'm done -- paradigm shifts in the present, but I don't think they
happened because we know more about I/O, or because we now know how it
ought to be. And I think that in 30 years people are going to think we
were completely nuts if they weren't here now to see it happening -- and
likely even if they were.

But right, you're not talking about C.

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