var map = {
“fu” : “f***ed-up”,
bar : “beyond all recognition”
};

alert(“Your understanding is ” + map.fu + ” ” + map["bar"] + “!”);

[...] Arno posted on his blog, Why JavaScript is a toy language. I disagree with him, although I will admit, JavaScript isn’t the greatest language out [...]

Yeah, I love it when I spend weeks putting together a complex web app for a client knowing that anybody can right click and take it. Great ROI. If I want to start a community project I’d like to be the one that makes that decision thanks.

Anyway, I don’t like javascript and I hate the fact that I am forced to use it. jQuery is ugly as hell too so that’s not that much better. Everybody goes on about chaining and how great it is. It’s plain stupid. It’s the programming equivalent to a massive run-on sentence. It’s very difficult to read and in the end doesn’t really save you a whole lot of lines. There is no advantage to chaining over using separate statements.

Out of the abstractions I’ve checked out, MooTools and Cappuccino are the most appealing. Unfortunately as seems to be the tendency on the web, the least robust (jQuery) has gained the most traction. When even Obi Wan Crockford uses the term “steaming pile” in his description of javascript, JS apologists should hardly be offended by this article.

I don’t agree something can be just good, or just bad. Something is good/bad by some criteria.

As we go further in semantics, it’s hard to say something is a toy language, because there is no such term (not mentioned by a language authority like an author of English dictionary). as for definition for a “toy” alone, one can have fun with any language, not only Javascript.

But because it should be an intention of debaters to try to understand each other, that’s what I do (and I hope You will try to repay reading my awful english).

Basically You just don’t like Javascript, and that’s hard to argue with. What is a flaw for You, for me is a virtue. For example You say that javascript is not secure because it’s not compiled. I couldn’t disagree more! I have no hacking background, but hacked two popular mmo games already that were made in flash. One is http://versus.thewitcher.com (quite funny duel mechanics btw). The developers thought they’re client is secured, as it’s compiled. That’s why at least from a an end-user point of view Javascript is better, because it enforces developers to put crucial checking and logic on a server. It also forces being open source making it so easy to learn (You see something nice? Just steal it’s source)

Nothing more to say about.

http://joose.it
http://openjsan.org/doc/s/sa/samuraijack/Joose/3.011/lib/Joose.html
http://openjsan.org/doc/s/sa/samuraijack/Joose/3.011/lib/Joose/Manual/Unsweetened.html

[...] doesn’t get much respect. “It’s a toy!”, they say. The language has been around ever since the earliest browsers.  But did you [...]

More specifically, I would like to point out something I found amusing in, “JavaScript: The Definitive Guide”, Section 9.3.7, where, “ImmutableRectangle”, is described using Doug Crockford’s, “private members”, pattern. I found it interesting that, while using such a pattern, the member properties of an object are immutable due to closure; however, the accessor methods are necessarily public, and are thus mutable just as the member properties were before the programmer created an IE memory leak (closure) to, “protect”, the precious variable… but then realized we still need to read the variable for it to be useful.

From that, I would conclude that while all data is mutable, some data is far more mutable than it should be; that the private member pattern of JavaScript is a glorious excercise in futility; and that feeling convinced of its usefulness would probably illustrate a need to justify the utility of something which is actually a toy. That being said, considering what JavaScript is to contemporary web design, I’ll still be finishing my study of it and willingly, if grudgingly, utilizing it professionally. People buy and sell toys quite readily, after all.