PyvaScript

Oh dear…

JavaScript evolution to follow Python, creator says.

I honestly am a fan of Python in general… really, I am. But statements like this make me nervous. If there were one thing about Python I’m not particularly impressed with, it’s how the lanugage has developed and matured over time. The standard libraries are littered with a multitude of inconsistent naming conventions, and many of the language feature additions over the years seem poorly planned and sloppy. Sometimes, there appear to have been second attempts to achieve the same feature only with better syntax this time. The organization of the language and its core features strike me as quite messy, actually. Additionally, despite frequent claims that Python is more object-oriented than Java or some other language, many Python features are procedural rather than object-oriented (len() anyone?).

Is Python really the language to model your language’s growth on?

JavaScript certainly isn’t without it’s own problems, but at least the core language is lean, clean, extremely consistent and very well designed. Now the DOM and additional browser APIs are an entirely different story… they’re a hot mess. It’s important to understand the difference. Most complaining about JavaScript that goes on is not about the core language itself, but rather it’s interface to the browser, which is notoriously buggy, inconsistent and nonsensical (mostly due to vendor competition).

So JavaScript will get “structural types” but not threads? That’s pretty disappointing. It will be interesting to see if JavaScript 1.5+ gets any traction at all on the web… it all depends on whether Microsoft continues development of the language in IE (or for that matter, Apple in Safari).

In related JavaScript news… Sun releases a Java server-side component model for creating Ajax-y taglibs in JSP or JSF. ‘Bout time.