10 February 2003

10Feb2003

A New-Found Respect for Javascript

By carlfish on

Javascript is a small language, but the problem didn't lie there. The problem is that what we generally refer to as "Javascript" is really the intersection of the language itself, plus the DOM (and to some extent CSS) support of whatever browser it's being run in. And it's only in the last year or so that web browsers have had anything approaching decent DOM/CSS support.

10Feb2003

A foolish consistency

By carlfish on

Java, being rooted firmly in the C tradition, believes that the first number is zero. Arrays and lists begin at index 0. The first character of a String is string.charAt(0). Thanks to the legacy of time.h, Java even believes January is month 0, skewing up the mental landscapes of anyone used to thinking of June as month 6, and December as month 12.