Item — HN Reader

Just upvoted the post, sorry. ;-)

These rants really seem to be based on the degree of respect some languages are enjoying in a certain community. Take weak typing / type coercion for an example: This is a common feature of scripting languages of the time, e.g.: Perl. I never read Perl being complained on for the same issue, which might well be, because it is a "serious" system language and because you might have to "really" learn it for any advanced use. (Even the boolean testing of int return types in Unix and C could be considered as some kind of premature type coercion.)

Late binding is probably most powerful feature of the language. (The language is built around it.) If it doesn't go with your test suites, considering that both the language and the language the tests are built with are Turing complete, adapt the tests rather than the language. This is a bit like ranting on C not being Logo and for it having other output facilities than a turtle.

Why not just develop in JS -- read: think JS --, for a change?

Horses are okay, but they're expensive, require much more maintenance, can only go about 40mph for a brief period of time, and can only seat two people, uncomfortably. And you're telling people who want to build roads to put cars on “why not just think in horses for a change?”

I never found javascript to be expensive. Sorry, but incorrect analogy.

> Sorry, but incorrect analogy.

You might as well say "incorrect human being", but okay.

> I never found javascript to be expensive.

That's very good for you. I'd stick with JavaScript if I didn't find it a horrible maintenance burden. But I do. You're free to differ, but you must accept my experience as part my criticism, you can't discard that and then attack what remains.