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Discussion on: What are the best and worst things about your favorite programming language?

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Isaac Lyman

Great summary.

Backwards compatibility has got to be the best and worst thing about JavaScript (and the web in general). On the one hand, if your website worked in 2008, it will probably always work, with minor exceptions for non-core technologies like Flash and ActiveX. On the other hand, our grandkids will probably still be seeing "use strict"; and wondering why NaN !== NaN.

When you spend time working with any other platform, you come to appreciate "don't break the web." But then you come back to JavaScript and start to wish we could break just one or two old websites by getting rid of things like "null and undefined both exist and don't mean the same thing" or "0 is falsy, so you can't null-guard a number using !".