The Dulin Report

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On Amazon Prime Video’s move to a monolith May 14, 2023 One size does not fit all: neither cloud nor on-prem Apr 10, 2023 Comparing AWS SQS, SNS, and Kinesis: A Technical Breakdown for Enterprise Developers Feb 11, 2023 Stop Shakespearizing Sep 16, 2022 Using GNU Make with JavaScript and Node.js to build AWS Lambda functions Sep 4, 2022 Monolithic repository vs a monolith Aug 23, 2022 Keep your caching simple and inexpensive Jun 12, 2022 Java is no longer relevant May 29, 2022 There is no such thing as one grand unified full-stack programming language May 27, 2022 Best practices for building a microservice architecture Apr 25, 2022 TypeScript is a productivity problem in and of itself Apr 20, 2022 In most cases, there is no need for NoSQL Apr 18, 2022 Node.js and Lambda deployment size restrictions Mar 1, 2021 Should we abolish Section 230 ? Feb 1, 2021 TDWI 2019: Architecting Modern Big Data API Ecosystems May 30, 2019 Microsoft acquires Citus Data Jan 26, 2019 Which AWS messaging and queuing service to use? Jan 25, 2019 Using Markov Chain Generator to create Donald Trump's state of union speech Jan 20, 2019 Let’s talk cloud neutrality Sep 17, 2018 A conservative version of Facebook? Aug 30, 2018 TypeScript starts where JavaScript leaves off Aug 2, 2017 Design patterns in TypeScript: Chain of Responsibility Jul 22, 2017 I built an ultimate development environment for iPad Pro. Here is how. Jul 21, 2017 Rather than innovating Walmart bullies their tech vendors to leave AWS Jun 27, 2017 Emails, politics, and common sense Jan 14, 2017 Don't trust your cloud service until you've read the terms Sep 27, 2016 I am addicted to Medium, and I am tempted to move my entire blog to it Sep 9, 2016 What I learned from using Amazon Alexa for a month Sep 7, 2016 Amazon Alexa is eating the retailers alive Jun 22, 2016 In search for the mythical neutrality among top-tier public cloud providers Jun 18, 2016 What can we learn from the last week's salesforce.com outage ? May 15, 2016 Why it makes perfect sense for Dropbox to leave AWS May 7, 2016 Managed IT is not the future of the cloud Apr 9, 2016 JavaScript as the language of the cloud Feb 20, 2016 Our civilization has a single point of failure Dec 16, 2015 Operations costs are the Achille's heel of NoSQL Nov 23, 2015 IT departments must transform in the face of the cloud revolution Nov 9, 2015 Setting Up Cross-Region Replication of AWS RDS for PostgreSQL Sep 12, 2015 Top Ten Differences Between ActiveMQ and Amazon SQS Sep 5, 2015 Ten Questions to Consider Before Choosing Cassandra Aug 8, 2015 The Three Myths About JavaScript Simplicity Jul 10, 2015 Big Data is not all about Hadoop May 30, 2015 Smart IT Departments Own Their Business API and Take Ownership of Data Governance May 13, 2015 Guaranteeing Delivery of Messages with AWS SQS May 9, 2015 We Need a Cloud Version of Cassandra May 7, 2015 Building a Supercomputer in AWS: Is it even worth it ? Apr 13, 2015 Ordered Sets and Logs in Cassandra vs SQL Apr 8, 2015 Exploration of the Software Engineering as a Profession Apr 8, 2015 Finding Unused Elastic Load Balancers Mar 24, 2015 Where AWS Elastic BeanStalk Could be Better Mar 3, 2015 Trying to Replace Cassandra with DynamoDB ? Not so fast Feb 2, 2015 Why I am Tempted to Replace Cassandra With DynamoDB Nov 13, 2014 How We Overcomplicated Web Design Oct 8, 2014 Infrastructure in the cloud vs on-premise Aug 25, 2014 Cassandra: a key puzzle piece in a design for failure Aug 18, 2014 Cassandra: Lessons Learned Jun 6, 2014

The Three Myths About JavaScript Simplicity

July 10, 2015

There is a perception among many in the software industry that JavaScript is simpler to learn and use than, say, Java. I've even heard some say that JavaScript developers are easier to recruit.

Somehow there is a perception of #javascript simplicity when in reality it is arguable as complex as C #callbackhell https://t.co/WAxbBaIxO9

— Oleg Dulin (@olegdulin) July 10, 2015

While there are many myths about JavaScript that detractors cite as reasons not to use it, there are also at least as many myths propagated by advocates of this technology. These are the most common ones I've heard over the years.

1) JavaScript Developers are Easier to Recruit

That only holds true if you are trying to hire a 17 year old who built simple websites out of his mother's basement. Yes, he knows JavaScript, and yes he'll take you up on that low ball offer that no experienced developer will accept. Will you get a timely professional result ?

Lisa Eadicicco writing for Business Insider shows that average JavaScript developer salary is right up there along with C++ and Java:

JavaScript - $91,461

C++ - $93,502

JAVA - $94,908

A cursory search of LinkedIn reveals almost 5 million people listing Java as their skill, and less than 3 million who list JavaScript as their skill. By this statistics alone, one is almost twice as likely to recruit a Java developer than they are a JavaScript developer.

2) JavaScript is Easy to Learn

By the law of Turing Equivalency most programming languages are equivalent and if you know one you can learn any other. The complexity is never in the language itself - it is in the frameworks and libraries.

I am writing this post in 2015 and JavaScript has been powering web apps for at least 20 years. One would think that by now handling HTTP and building MVC apps would be part of the platform. Yet, JavaScript leaves much to be desired.

JavaScript, for example, has multiple libraries for HTTP REST requests. In Node.js it is not uncommon to use one library on the server and a totally different one on the client. Consider the multitude of single-page app MVC frameworks - each one has a drastically different philosophy of using it.

The difference between null and undefined and between == and === as well as lack of type safety leave much to be desired. The developer has to constantly keep those nuances in mind, as if they have nothing better to do.

3) Non-Developers Can Learn to Use JavaScript

This argument usually goes along with myth #2. The only advantage JavaScript has over other languages is that the most one needs to get started writing in it is a text editor and a web browser. That is not something to be overlooked -- JavaScript really is an easy language to get started in because of that.

More often than not developers will learn the business domain of their apps long before business users will learn how to program. There are languages that business users may be more comfortable writing code in -- SQL comes to mind, for instance, and perhaps the data and reporting APIs can and should be built by the business analysts.

So Why JavaScript ?

The points above should not be a reason not to use JavaScript. Reality is that when it comes to building dynamic webapps and microservices there is no choice other than to use it. It is a great tool for rapid prototyping and for building backend services using platforms like AWS Lambda. Despite what I said, it is a great language and has many useful applications -- but make no mistake, it is a programming language like any other.