They’re not the same language, and don’t even share any direct ancestry, but whenever I run into nonsense like this:

I shake my fist at the Java programming language, because I attribute this sort of harebrained semantics and/or method naming to the fact that “JavaScript” contains “Java” in its name.

Seriously, what kind of lame developer would create a method on a Date object called “setFullYear” – and have it take a month and a date as well as a year?  Grrrrr.

Flame away.

I admit it – when it comes to JavaScript debugging, I’m still a huge fan of the alert() statement.  Unfortunately, what can happen is that you get alert-itis, especially if you’re debugging loops or arrays, and the alerts can breed like mice, or spiders, or chicken pox and soon you’re wading through hundreds or thousands of alerts, tearing your hair out, wailing, gnashing teeth, and you typically have to use Task Manager to kill your browser process and start all over again.

Google Chrome, I just found out, has a great feature that lets you disable all future alerts coming from your page:

Just check the box on voila – no future alerts.  So you can get to a point where you think you’ve discovered something, then check the box, and you won’t have to kill your browser.

…so he won’t have much to do with me through Sunday.  I got some good news via e-mail tonight.  I’ll be cranking out a very short-term but very high-pressure project for an business acquaintance, and all the work has to be done (as in deployed/released) “by 11:59 PM Sunday night.”  I like clear specifications like that

So what’s the work consist of?  A bunch of Javascript and Ajax updates to an existing project which I’d previously contributed to.  It’s a vindication of the long-term view: treat the customer right, go above and beyond, do good work, do the right thing, and sooner rather than later you’ll get rewarded with another project.

So, I’m at a coffee shop right now, getting ready to work every evening and all weekend on this side project.  It gets me out of the house, which isn’t a bad thing right now.  I’ll still have to fit in time for exercise and the odd serendipitous invitation that might come up, but otherwise it’s work, work, work!

Now, how do you implement dictionaries in Javascript again?

Yes, Javascript, of all things. I’m amazed at how Javascript has emerged in the last eight years or so from a given-up-for-dead toy technology that people were counseled to turn off into a really full-fledged, powerful programming language.

Check out this moon lander example:

http://genetic.moonlander.googlepages.com/

Very cool I/O demonstrating the program evolution. Not too much in the way of documentation, but use Firebug to look into the guts. Check out the mutation and crossover operators — more straightforward than I would have guessed. Makes me want to pick up my Koza volumes again.

For the practicing engineer, Javascript still has some major drawbacks in artifact structure, and the tool support is still not great, but it’s gaining more and more power. I’ll give it up for dead once it gets a some vendor goes IPO with a distributed n-tier middleware OR/M product for Javascript. Until then I’m happy.