Node.js isn’t good enough | Hacker News Reader

Node.js isn’t good enough

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> True that with low level languages like C++, Java

This guy doesn't even know what he's talking about...

I don't know about that. When you have to do casts to convert from one size of integer to another size of integer, then you are talking about pretty low-level stuff here.

Mind you, I still consider both C++ (and its ilk) and Java to just be more modern variations of COBOL. If you have programmed in COBOL you will understand why I make that comparison?

Arguably low level or high level is not black or white, but a degree, and while certainly C is higher level than assembler, it's still pretty low level, but C++ is higher level than C. I'd say Java is higher level than C++ for a number of reasons, being pointers, memory management and garbage collection an important part of it.

But I wouldn't agree that Javascript is higher level than Java. About casting primitive types, Java pretty much takes care of that for you, as well as autoboxing between primitives and their object counterparts. Java is statically typed while Javascript is not, and that is a problem of Javascript, but that doesn't mean it's higher level. Javascript is an awfully designed language that happened to win in client side browser so we have to live with it. Why self-inflict the pain of having to use it also on server side is beyond my understanding.

And comparing Cobol to C++ or Java is plain ridiculous...

I never said anything about whether javascript is higher or lower than Java. Whether a language is statically typed, dynamically typed or somewhere in between is not relevant to how high level it may be. C++, Java, Javascript and many other languages are badly designed, for all sorts of reasons. However, this is also not relevant to how higher a level the language is.

And comparing COBOL to C++ or Java is nor ridiculous if you have programmed in any serious way with COBOL. The verbosity level of these languages is enough to put them all in the same bucket.

I agree C++ and Java are verbose, yet COBOL is at least an order of magnitude more verbose, since it lacks many abstractions. I have programmed in C++ and Java, and I admit I have not programmed in COBOL, but I migrated COBOL data files to databases and it was a PITA.

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