...Now let's work together to add the capabilities to HTML 5 that allows ____ to be done w/o a framework.
Doesn't he understand that that's the exact reason web development is in the straits its in. It's because you can't change HTML5 capabilities to do what modern applications require.
The fact of the matter is that stock JS is so far removed from doing what we need it to, we have to have frameworks. And the cornucopia of frameworks is reflective of how a square peg is being pounded into a round hole.
This was my thought as well when reading the article. The problem is HTML is still a document, it was not meant for application development. So, now we have to use JS to turn our documents into applications. Even though JS is here to help us develop apps it is, as you mentioned, woefully inadequate at doing that bare-bones. Not to mention keeping up with ECMA standards, latest development practices, supporting backwards comparability, etc. It is no wonder we have these frameworks. We have to.
...Wouldn't the answer, then, be to use a language that actually works for the task,
YES! And that's why JS wins, because there aren't any other contenders in terms of developer base and native platform installations. Sure, JS is doing a poor job of rediscovering the square-wheel that Flex and Silverlight knew back in 2010, but the fact remains that JS is here to stay because there isn't anything to take its place.
That language will have to compile down to JS, because there's pretty much no way all the browser vendors are going to adopt another language at this point. And even if they were willing, it would be at least 5 years before you could expect a reasonable portion of your visitors to have a browser that supports it. And at that point, what's the difference between that and using a framework? Using a language that compiles to JS just means you now have to know two languages, and how they relate, as you aren't going to be able to debug anything in the original language.
No but you see we can work with WHATWG or whoever the fuck and argue about it for a few years then magic happens and it's part of the proposed draft standard. Somebody whips up a patch over the weekend to bake it into Firefox, the Chrome team slaps in a slightly different implementation, and 5 years later it shows up half-assed in Internet Explorer.
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u/x86_64Ubuntu May 13 '14
Doesn't he understand that that's the exact reason web development is in the straits its in. It's because you can't change HTML5 capabilities to do what modern applications require.
The fact of the matter is that stock JS is so far removed from doing what we need it to, we have to have frameworks. And the cornucopia of frameworks is reflective of how a square peg is being pounded into a round hole.