And apparently I spoke too soon. It just took a good while for it to start up.

The second link doesn't run and asks to enable flash...

This is inherently the opposite of what you are saying. The goal of the language services is to provide the same functionality to all ides vs every ide implementing their own solution per language. This also allows for the language owner to be in charge of the quality of the services in the ide.

I do the same. We have a private repo that proxies (and stores) all copies of everything we use so that we won't lose access to them. It's kind of a bear, but on the Maven side, it acts as a network proxy for our entire dev team, though the overall benefits aren't that high.

As a server side language, I'm extremely torn. I've actually been using Typescript pretty heavily lately (and decorators), and it makes the code I write not too far off from the Spring/Java code I would generally write. My biggest concern with NodeJS is the maturity of the ecosystem, and how it plays with enterprise software development. One of my goto examples is LDAP support. There were a handful of libraries (circa 2014) that sort of worked, but had gaps, and ultimately required doing some odd trickery to work. The analog to Java would have been one or two libraries that are mature and just work.

I personally find NodeJS is generally a fine experience, but the ecosystem (which is what the story is about) is just lacking structure that other languages have. It will mature, but may be a lot of pain along the way. The other day I had to choose between Python and NodeJS for a utility I was writing, and I went with Python because batteries were included, and I was afraid of trying to figure out how to include dependencies on the remote host in a consistent and manner.

From a runtime environment, I agree there are lots of "quirks", and the DOM is one of the worst cross-platform interfaces of all time. Less of a contract and more of wishes and hopes. ES2015 really does focus on syntax (e.g. "use strict" is default when using modules and not required). "this" has always been a gotcha, but that is part of a language where the function is the unit context. I actually like that about Javascript (though I realize not everyone does). For that reason "let" was also introduced to provide more normal behavior for scoping per what others expect coming from other languages.

I don't think it will ever be a "Java" or "C#" but it isn't necessarily a bad thing as lot of people seem to be happy with it's design and how it works.

Javascript has some terribly bad parts (as does perl and php) and I would concur that languages like Python/Ruby seemed to be planned in entirety a bit more. I would recommend looking at ES2015+, the next revision of the Javascript. It does a lot to curb those issues (JS actually has a "strict" mode that handles some of the gotchas), and ES2015 adds proper module support, as well as a standard class syntax.

These features have been in use for years by transpilers (to cover the gap between agreement on a new language feature and the time before it is adopted by the runtimes). Typescript is an even more powerful extension of ES2015 that adds compile-time type analysis/verification but generates nearly perfect idiomatic ES2015 code.

I'm not sure how JavaScript would be that different than any other scripting language (Perl/Ruby/Python/PHP/Groovy), and those seem to have viable web ecosystems Not 100% sure where the hate for JS is coming from. Unless it's a disdain for scripting languages in general. That would generally leave you with C#/Java and Java, historically, has been the only cross platform solution, and the language has stagnated heavily over the last decade (though 1.8 and 1.9 are showing signs of life).

Maven has the same problem in the SNAPSHOT dependencies, as they are free to be updated in the standard cycles. You also have to consider that the Maven plugins run in the same space as the user (and are pulled from the same dependency repositories). This makes maven just as susceptible with one major caveat. There are multiple federated repositories and publishing to one of those repositories requires reputation, and hosting your own repository (without reputation) is like downloading untrusted APKs on Android.

Though honestly, you could only sheer a sheep once. It just wouldn't be pretty. :-)

Accidentally modded redundant. Commenting to undo.

Almost identically history, AppleBASIC in elementary, onto GW then QBasic in middle school. On to Visual Basic for a few apps in early high school and then into C++ with AP Computer Science. The only difference was that I was the last year of C++ before the transition to Java.

Pretty certain the tools for actionscript3 and actionscript3 itself (the language the flash runtime uses) is far more sophisticated and robust than javascript. AS3 is more comparable to Java and .NET, and would be a wonderful toolset for building web applications. It was everything Java attempted to be (in the browser).

2 tbsp = 1 ounce
1/4 cup = 2 ounces
Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Exactly. T-Mobile is already in a position that is friendly to unsubsidized phones. There is a reason Google and T-Mobile have worked together often. I know that Deutsche Telekom was looking to sell off T-Mobile as well. I guarantee that a T-Mobile infused Google would be near unstoppable.