Javascript is a funny language to me. I have things that I really like about it, like higher order functions and being a prototype based language (more on that later). There are also things that I absolutely hate about it like the + and === operators, and how the prototype based things really only half work. The thing that really ruins my experience with the language, however, is tail call optimization.
As many of you now know, Ecmascript 4 does not support tail call optimization. For those that don't know, tail call recursion is where the interpreter takes a recursive function and turns it into one that isn't recursive, so, you aren't limited by stack size. Tail call optimization (TCO) is the heartbeat of functional programming languages and the functional paradigm, without it, functional programming really isn't possible on the current type of processors and memory models we have (I swear I'll be the first one on the planet to get myself a graph reduction processor).
So, basically, by not supporting TCO, Javascript turns from a language that you could (if you tried a little) write functional code in, into a language that really wants to be functional, but can't, and one that really wants to be prototypal and can't.
Now, about prototypes. If you want to understand why Javascript's prototypes really, really suck, go learn a language like Io. Javascript basically ruins that elegance by trying to make it easier for Java/C++ programmers to understand, which would be okay, if it actually did that, but, as we all know, prototypes in Javascript are probably the most misunderstood concept in the entire language.
I would okay with all of the bad things of Javascript, if only it had TCO. If it had TCO, I would have probably never learned Scheme, and I would have loved to write form validators and login pages all day long with all the recursive goodness, but, someone went and screwed that up, so, we're all stuck with what we have.
As many of you now know, Ecmascript 4 does not support tail call optimization. For those that don't know, tail call recursion is where the interpreter takes a recursive function and turns it into one that isn't recursive, so, you aren't limited by stack size. Tail call optimization (TCO) is the heartbeat of functional programming languages and the functional paradigm, without it, functional programming really isn't possible on the current type of processors and memory models we have (I swear I'll be the first one on the planet to get myself a graph reduction processor).
So, basically, by not supporting TCO, Javascript turns from a language that you could (if you tried a little) write functional code in, into a language that really wants to be functional, but can't, and one that really wants to be prototypal and can't.
Now, about prototypes. If you want to understand why Javascript's prototypes really, really suck, go learn a language like Io. Javascript basically ruins that elegance by trying to make it easier for Java/C++ programmers to understand, which would be okay, if it actually did that, but, as we all know, prototypes in Javascript are probably the most misunderstood concept in the entire language.
I would okay with all of the bad things of Javascript, if only it had TCO. If it had TCO, I would have probably never learned Scheme, and I would have loved to write form validators and login pages all day long with all the recursive goodness, but, someone went and screwed that up, so, we're all stuck with what we have.
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