[Info-vax] basic BASIC question

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/6/2025 10:24 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <67a4cc2d$0$708$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 2/3/2025 1:24 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2025-01-31, Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>>>> If you really want to have a good time, look at how
>>>> JavaScript deals with this.  Things aren't just true
>>>> or false, they're truthy and falsy, and sometimes Nan.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8xNAc2ic8
>>>
>>> And we use this crap to build critical websites that our society and
>>> general way of life now depend on. :-(
>>>
>>> And some even think it's a good idea to run this server-side. :-(
>>
>> JavaScript has had a huge market share in presentation layer
>> in web applications for decades.
>>
>> Either companies don't know how to profit maximize or
>> JavaScript is/was a good choice for this type
>> of code.
> 
> Server side Javascript does not run on the browser.
> 
>> Small code bases, frequent releases and high user
>> tolerance for small ooopses favor a language like
>> JavaScript. Ada would not work well in this context
>>from a business perspective.
>>
>> Code bases are not small anymore though. And TypeScript
>> has taken huge chunks of market share from
>> JavaScript in recent years.
> 
> Typescript is a better language.  JavaScript should
> have been better than it was, but that shippe has sailed,
> and the story has been told many times: it was ten days
> from conception to ship, and the consequent lack of
> polish shows.

If JavaScript was unique in the web frontend world
for lack of type safety, then the lack of type safety
could be due to its history.

But it is not unique. Other popular languages like
PHP and Python also has a relaxed approach to types.
Past popular languages like Perl and VBS same.

Web frontend is not like backend or embedded.

Arne