1. it's in a runtime that is in more machines than any other in history.
No. Never has, never will be. It's just a plainly obvious fact, no explanation needed.
2. can be loaded instantaneously with no installation procedures.
No. see above.
3. and no plugins
No. see above.
5. is broadly accessible to people with various kinds of disabilities
No. What makes you even barely think this even slightly applies?
6. doesn't require a team of 20 engineers taking 4 years to build. (which other tech has achieved, and arguably much better, but not combined with the other things above)
I'll give you that one, but not without a windows machine, and a multi-thousand dollar piece of proprietary software.
I'll admit I am not sure whether you mean BASIC or VISUAL BASIC. But none of these points apply to either, 6 even less.
Are you familiar with early Apple and Microsoft products? I mean Basic. 5 we can strike, the interface was text-only. 1 was true at the time Basic was released, and that's why "it's different this time" is not relevant there.
So it was text only. That makes it accessible how, exactly? Can you cite specific examples of supporting technology for this?
1. was true at the time Basic was released, but so what? it has none of the "features" that we're actually talking about, and is less powerful than even javascript version 1. By the time visual basic had our beloved features, 1. was no longer true.
I said we can strike 5. That means I agree with you about 5.
Your argument is "it's different this time" because of reasons 1-7. I'm claiming 1,2,3,6 are not different when compared to Basic, at the time Basic was released.
My argument is incredulity that you'd make such assertions that are baldly false, and don't apply to the actual reality that we live in. "Visual Basic" and "Basic" are not the same technology, and you can't simply merge them to get more points.
1. was true of BASIC for a brief time in the 80's, but was never true of VB
2. Not applicable to Basic (you had to type basic programs in by hand from a book, not exactly instant), not true of VB
3. Not applicable to Basic. What does "plugin" even mean there? You still have to type it in by hand. Not true of VB
5 was true of neither as you've conceded.
6 was true of visual basic, but never true of basic- to the degree that we're talking about sophisticated GUI apps, not simplistic text based adventures or weather quizzes.
Well, I said "Why not VB6?" because I don't know much about it. But I'm pretty sure about Basic. You presented a list of reasons why JS is superior, and many of those were true of Basic at the time it was popular.
2. You can load Basic programs instantaneously. They're interpreted, and the interpreter came with the operating system or even the computer's hardware. How is JS any more instantaneous? You didn't have to type in a whole Basic program every time you wanted to run one - I'm guessing this is the confusion here.
3. There were no plugins. That's all that claim 3 ever was. I don't know how typing in a program by hand is relevant at any rate. Surely every program has to be typed in by hand, unless you're doing visual programming.
6. I thought this was about Basic itself, which did not take a team of 20 engineers four years to develop. As for applications, at the time it was really simple to program in compared to something like C.
So it comes down to 4, 5, 7. These aren't true of Basic, but they don't necessarily make JS a winner:
4. Basic programs were portable to machines that had interpreters, and there were lots of them. But sure, it probably wasn't as portable as JS, as I don't know if you could run it on a mainframe. C is a very portable language though, and always has been, so why does this mean JS wins?
5. Improvements in accessibility compared to the 80's applies to all technology. How is the disability support in JS better than other languages?
7. Home computers were IN YOUR FUCKING HOUSE! at the time Basic was popular. But non-Basic programs ran on those computers too, just like non-JS programs run on your phone. Miniaturization benefits all languages.
This argument is absurd. I can't help but feel that I've been majorly trolled here, so I give up. Have fun writing your next big app in BASIC. I'd love to see how far you get. It sounds like you could go far, since you have one of those fancy new computers with a DISK drive on it.
I never said I thought Basic was a good language (for programming in today). I just said it has (had) many of the same features that you believe make JS a good language. Where Basic doesn't have the features of JS, those features are readily available in other languages, due to technology advances.
I'm not even saying that the features you listed are bad features, nor am I saying that JS is a bad language. I'm simply refuting your primary claim about JS superiority due to some list of features, and about how this is different than all the other times. All popular languages have their place, by definition, and JS is one of them.
For what it's worth, I wasn't trolling, but I was arguing for the sake of it. Since I now get that you're pretty upset, I just wanted to say sorry about that.
