Programming Languages Are Authoring Tools for Platforms

(makonea.com)

14 points | by jdw64 3 days ago

1 comments

  • sublinear 20 minutes ago
    I'm disappointed there wasn't more written here about Javascript, and more broadly, the web browser. The browser is the platform of the modern era, and Javascript is the strongest example of a programming language being an "authoring tool".

    Web apps carry the weight of ecommerce, entertainment, social media, etc. The fact that those apps are frequently at the center of political debate and pop culture underscores their broader success far beyond the discussions that only developers understand.

    Along with the HTML and CSS, the code written for the corporate web is not up to the developers alone. You can't ship anything until it's been through far more review by non-technical stakeholders than the devs using other languages may get away with. Yes the quality can vary, but when it's bad it reveals the dysfunction of the organization in a very public way. There's so much cross-discipline human involvement that the developers are in roles that resemble a bureaucrat more than a programmer.