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https://reaktor.com/blog/node-js-satell ... rogrammer/

Why would anyone, after reading that paen to idiocy, ever hire these clowns for anything ever again?

I have to apologize to people who work primarily with javascript, because this sort of thing is why I hate it so much.

Wait... what? Somebody's been smoking something. WTF?!??

Edit: Skimmed their web site. Some choice tidbits:

"Think lean, work agile, renew the methods of working in the field of technology."

"growth hacking"

And on their careers page, an opening for a "Digital Project Maestro".

the article wrote:

With JavaScript, developers can also update the software in the satellite, allowing them to extend the functionality after the launch.

Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that no sat has ever been updated from ground control before. Never. Spirit still runs the same source as when it launched. Same with Opportunity.



I'll await the article in about January of 2017 where someone inserted a really bland overflow attack into their uplink to the sat and destroyed the thing, because JavaScript.

Umm.... wow.

Somehow apropos: Software Update Destroys $286 Million Japanese Satellite

CampinCarl wrote:

Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that no sat has ever been updated from ground control before. Never. Spirit still runs the same source as when it launched. Same with Opportunity.

Just to nit pick here...

1. SecretSquirrel's link indicates that, yes, we do update satellites in orbit. Sometimes with disastrous results.

2. Technically, Spirit and Opportunity aren't satellites. They're ROVs.

3. We've been remotely patching ROV code at least as far back as the Mars Pathfinder mission, in 1997: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/ ... count.html (I have no idea if this was ever done with Spirit or Opportunity though)

There's an O'Reilly book called "Javascript: The Good Parts". It's not even 200 pages, and I'm pretty sure these people are not in it.

CampingCarl wrote:

Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that no sat has ever been updated from ground control before. Never. Spirit still runs the same source as when it launched. Same with Opportunity.

We've actually launched things into space without the full program necessary to complete their mission pre-loaded. That is, sometimes storage space is re-used so that if we didn't "update" them they'd fail because they were never fully told what to do in the first place.

---

The biggest problem I have with the whole thing is that idea that complexity and difficulty in programming stems solely from the lack of a programming mono-culture. Things are hard, you see, because people used things other than javascript, which evidently is the first programming language to reach ubiquity or something.

I've encountered that attitude in differing forms from a lot of people who do javascript, and while they are usually wonderfully earnest and positive individuals, you start to think that maybe they were all raised in a cave by a cult or something.

In a perfect world, everyone who has a job writing code would be able to understand what thier code is doing inside the machine. Clearly, anyone thinking of Javascript as some kind of panacea for the pitfalls of developing software isn't there yet. There are plenty of good reasons why Javascript should be completely redesigned from the ground up, but it's pretty well entrenched these days, so that's easier said than done.

As someone whose day job includes wrangling Javascript, among other things, let me adapt Mr. Churchill's words.

"Javascript may be the worst programming language, except all alternatives have no widespread support."

To JS's defense, it has a lot of good bits, and the existence of JQuery and other frameworks dulled the pain quite a lot. Heck, in my mind, "JavaScript" really means "ECMAScript + JQuery/Angular/whatever".

I posted the previous comment without reading the OP's linked article.

Hoooleeee schêêêt. I want some of what they're smoking.

"You have probably heard of JavaScript, a programming language used to build this very web page [...]"

Yes, and after having to scroll down no less than 1200 pixels to read "this very web page", all I can say is they can go suck a lemon.

Redocbew wrote:

There's an O'Reilly book called "Javascript: The Good Parts". It's not even 200 pages, and I'm pretty sure these people are not in it.

I think this picture sums things up.

morphine wrote:

To JS's defense, it has a lot of good bits, and the existence of JQuery and other frameworks dulled the pain quite a lot. Heck, in my mind, "JavaScript" really means "ECMAScript + JQuery/Angular/whatever".

I've reeeeally dug into jQuery and Angular 1.5.x a lot over the last 6-8 weeks, and it's super cool. Prior to last fall, I had no idea just how much JavaScript had been extended by frameworks like that.

Backbone is pretty nice also. I tend to prefer that over Angular if I have the choice. I thought the syntax of jQuery was pretty brutal at first, but once you start thinking more functionally it makes more sense.

While we're on this tangent, I'd like to add:

The problem isn't strictly the language itself. It's the backwards compatibility with a lot of old browser versions' JS implementations and a few language quirks that stem from that backwards compatibility that do the vast majority of the damage.

morphine wrote:

As someone whose day job includes wrangling Javascript, among other things, let me adapt Mr. Churchill's words.

"Javascript may be the worst programming language, except all alternatives have no widespread support."

To JS's defense, it has a lot of good bits, and the existence of JQuery and other frameworks dulled the pain quite a lot. Heck, in my mind, "JavaScript" really means "ECMAScript + JQuery/Angular/whatever".

I thought C and C++ is far more widely supported.

whm1974 wrote:

morphine wrote:

As someone whose day job includes wrangling Javascript, among other things, let me adapt Mr. Churchill's words.

"Javascript may be the worst programming language, except all alternatives have no widespread support."

To JS's defense, it has a lot of good bits, and the existence of JQuery and other frameworks dulled the pain quite a lot. Heck, in my mind, "JavaScript" really means "ECMAScript + JQuery/Angular/whatever".

I thought C and C++ is far more widely supported.

I think morphine's paraphrased quote was referring to web browser support.

Javascript's main use case is malware, hence noscript. If you combine the entire ecosystem as a whole with all the analytics and associated crap: nothing more than malware for espionage purposes against all internet users.

I'd argue that javascript is a thousand times better than python which people love to use all over the engineering and data science worlds.  I might be a bit bitter from having to rewrite all kinds of garbage python.  If you include modern variants of js such as typescript it's a million times better.  Javascript has grown up.

ex:
https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScriptSamples/blob/master/raytracer/raytracer.ts

hanklai wrote:

You should try Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to programming. It will teach you the code in the simplest of ways. Start with the basics, learn to use variables then move onto control structures, functions, and data structures. After completing these topics you will learn about higher-order functions, closures and object-oriented programming.

Quoting without the text stuff for higher readability. The dark text especially wreaks havoc on the dark color scheme.

CampinCarl wrote:

I'll await the article in about January of 2017 where someone inserted a really bland overflow attack into their uplink to the sat and destroyed the thing, because JavaScript.

The countdown is on...

curtisb wrote:

The countdown is on...

Assuming they even launched this absurd gimmick, those nano-satellite don't tend to stay functional for very long regardless of operating code. Something randomly fails, killing the electronics or the attitude control or any number of things and it's dead or effectively so. It gets hit by a wallop of radiation and dies. etc...

And, depending on the launch profile, it likely won't have a very long life anyway: without enough altitude there's too much drag. Most of these projects have lifetimes in the months, with a year or two being the best they can hope for.

And that's assuming their rocket doesn't explode or abort the secondary payload to save the primary.

just brew it! wrote:

I think morphine's paraphrased quote was referring to web browser support.

Sure, but on a satellite? I'd much rather have something that can conceivably be run through a hardened compiler...

Waco wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

I think morphine's paraphrased quote was referring to web browser support.

Sure, but on a satellite? I'd much rather have something that can conceivably be run through a hardened compiler...

No argument there, when it comes to mission critical stuff.

If the overall system architecture or OS provides robust partitioning/protection facilities, in theory "anything goes" for the non-critical systems though.

To draw an analogy with civilian avionics systems, the FAA classifies software into 5 safety levels, designated A-E. Level A is essentially "If this software malfunctions, there's a non-trivial chance that the aircraft goes down and everyone dies". Level E is "some of the passengers might get a little annoyed if this doesn't work". You can mix software of different levels on the same system, but if you do your RTOS must be able to guarantee that software at lower safety levels can't affect software at higher levels. Typically stuff is simply segregated onto different systems with different safety certification levels.

More generally (e.g. automotive rather than aircraft), with the push to virtualisation and more powerful processors I'm seeing people using an RTOS hypervisor with several guests. Some of those guests are safety critical and running an RTOS, others are things like entertainment systems potentially running Android or other non-safety certified OS.

Disclosure: I work at a company doing this.

If you're not using TypeScript - you should be. Type safety is important to any application beyond a trivial size. All the hate JS gets is usually by folks who haven't written anything on the web since the late 90s and yes there are terrible developers that find JS a great gateway language to programming in general. The problem with JS isn't the language itself, it's the misuse of it for things it was never intended for, and the constant crazy level of new tooling for new ecosystems that seem to come out every other week. Then you mix that **** with entry-level (read: inexperienced) devs who mix-and-match libraries for things they don't need (you'd be surprised how much of a crutch jQuery is for people who just don't bother to learn the DOM) and the result is bitter devs who shun new tech and what not because of the abuse of others.

There are a lot of promising frameworks that do a lot of good things in terms of modularizing things, tracking dependencies, and managing load order - I personally don't use one. I develop in C# for MVC, and I use the frameworks JS and CSS bundling to minify and organize my js files in my application. Until I see the need for the a JS framework, I won't use one. My friends are using Aurelia and I hear good things - I believe it's from the folks who worked on durandal. /shrug

steelcity_ballin wrote:

If you're not using TypeScript - you should be. Type safety is important to any application beyond a trivial size. All the hate JS gets is usually by folks who haven't written anything on the web since the late 90s and yes there are terrible developers that find JS a great gateway language to programming in general. The problem with JS isn't the language itself, it's the misuse of it for things it was never intended for, and the constant crazy level of new tooling for new ecosystems that seem to come out every other week. Then you mix that **** with entry-level (read: inexperienced) devs who mix-and-match libraries for things they don't need (you'd be surprised how much of a crutch jQuery is for people who just don't bother to learn the DOM) and the result is bitter devs who shun new tech and what not because of the abuse of others.

There are a lot of promising frameworks that do a lot of good things in terms of modularizing things, tracking dependencies, and managing load order - I personally don't use one. I develop in C# for MVC, and I use the frameworks JS and CSS bundling to minify and organize my js files in my application. Until I see the need for the a JS framework, I won't use one. My friends are using Aurelia and I hear good things - I believe it's from the folks who worked on durandal. /shrug

+1
We're using Typescript for core components of our business-critical project. The JS community has its pitfalls but there's something to be said about the asynchronous model of Javascript and Node.js, and the code quality that type-checking systems like Typescript or Flow buy you.