The Gemini protocol is brutally simple, which makes it just about too useless for apps, tracking, and commercial purposes. Gemtext, the format for Gemini pages, is very basic; with about half as many features as markdown, it’s barely a step above plain text. As a result, Gemini is a small universe of blogs and personal sites.
Its simplicity makes it easy for people to create compatible clients and services for it. It’s self-hosting friendly and there are also hosting services, like smol.pub and some pubnixes.
Of course, you’ll need to get a Gemini browser or visit a Gemini-to-web proxy to access it.
Try to learn it and you’ll see!
At least if you know programming beforehand.
I’ve been writing JavaScript for 10 years, the majority of that professionally. I have a formal education in computer science. In college, I wrote Java, assembly, C, Python, Lisp, Prolog, and SQL. Outside of school, I’ve written Go, Rust, Ruby, and probably dabbled in a bunch of others.
As someone that knows programming and that has learned JavaScript, I don’t get the sense that people here have actually given JavaScript a fair chance. Sure, it’s not without its issues, but why don’t you learn it and see?
Voyager, which I believe is the most popular Lemmy iOS client, is written in JavaScript. It’s a fantastic app. There are a bunch of people that love hating on JS, but there are also a bunch of people that hate being locked into cloud services that can be shut down at any time. JavaScript allows you to build local-first apps that are less dependent on a server (obviously, backend is still a thing).
Learn C++ or a modern high level language (not Java). You seem stuck in the old stuff which might be why you don’t see the obvious flaws with js.
That a nice program is written in a language says nothing positive about the language IMO. Everything was written in old clunky languages at a certain point.
Lol isn’t C++ insanely bloated? Surely there are more modern languages. Like Zig maybe?
Also I mentioned I’ve written Rust and Go, which are pretty modern. I’d be interested in learning Zig if I had more time. As for the other languages, CS programs just use older languages, but it was more about learning the concepts like data structures.
But it’s very much a right tool for the right job. JavaScript is a very good tool for front end development. C++ is a very good tool for writing a rendering pipeline or doing signal processing (I’m guessing idk I haven’t tried doing that stuff).
But my original read in this thread was “JavaScript sucks” not “JavaScript sucks when you use it for the wrong task”. It doesn’t suck, but I agree don’t use it for the wrong task.
Missed you’re still in school, which explains a couple of things.
Doing a little 100k lines soft is doable in any language, and you are right trying out lots of popular languages, there’s a high probability you’ll end up working with one of them.
Okay so why is javascript crap, and C/C++ not? Javascript is just a scriptung language, it’s made for a simple front end displaying simple things, sure you can make a software with it but the reason you should isn’t about the language or the “task” but 1) what tech choice some guy did 15 years ago and now you’re stuck with it, or 2) you know how to program in javascript. No sane person is doing a javascript program otherwise (except learning maybe) because, its, and it is even in the name, a scripting language. And a very poorly made too.
Which means you can’t do large software with it, and you’ll hit performance bottlenecks if you try. Also it will be an architectural nightmare.
C/C++ is lots. That’s probably why you think it’s bloated, you can do anything from assembler up to template metaprogramming, so yeah, a steep learning curve if you try to master even a subset. But classes and inheritance is something you should learn anyways so if you try, I’d advice you to start there. C/C++ is extremely fast, versatile and can handle extremely large projects, but it’s also complex, and will blow your stuff up if used badly, a glass vial of nitroglycerin of sorts. Modern C++ helps a lot with the dangers of classic C/C++.
The best language for the task (with the exception of 1) and 2) already mentioned) is probably between the two.
Cheers
I’m not still in school. I graduated a few years ago. And officially I’m a “senior engineer”. Though admittedly I feel more mid-level.
Parts of what you said are true, but I disagree with your overall sentiment. Node.js, which is extremely popular, has put JavaScript on the backend. I’ve seen large-scale backends, with no JS performance issues, written in JavaScript.
Then you have React/React Native. I’ve heard Facebook has at least 100 thousand React components. It’s possible that’s shared across a few projects, but the point is Facebook is running massive projects with JavaScript.
I’m writing this comment on a Lemmy client I wrote. I used JavaScript to build a universal app that is capable of rendering on the server (via Node.js) in the browser using React.js, and on native (iOS, Android, macOS) using React Native. That’s one singular codebase that I wrote that can run in 3 places. And it wouldn’t be possible without JavaScript.
I don’t mean this in a mean way, but I would caution that you seem very locked into your ways. It’s better to keep an open mind and always be trying new languages. It might surprise you that the JavaScript of today is different than the JavaScript you were initially exposed to. And it goes for me too. I want to continue to lean and push myself out of my comfort zone.
We can sit here and complain about how JavaScript should have never become what it is, but I’d rather finish my app before I have to clock into my 9-5 to write JavaScript professionally for 8 hours. But next time my C++ writing coworker, who manages the code for our hardware accessory, asks my opinion, I’ll be sure to tell him I’m not a real programmer because I write JS so my opinion doesn’t matter :)
Not exactly the same, but reminds me of this