Stunning the non-JavaScript web developers

What were the Django people doing while JavaScript was becoming popular?

If you’ve been following my last six posts, you know that a revolution around JavaScript started in 2008 and became more like an explosion from 2015 onwards. What were the non-JavaScript web developers doing in the meantime?

I can tell you about myself. For about 10 years, I ignored and resisted all that.

Yes, like everyone, I’m always busy, and there are tons of things to learn anyway. I had wanted to learn a little JavaScript since 2000 but I had never got to it.

But I think it may have been more to it than that. JavaScript was a bad language. I didn’t want to program in a bad language. I was using serious stuff like Python and Django. I was too self-important to engage in inferior tools.

It’s not just conceit. Very often there’s a new fashion that explodes, only to die off a bit later. Like XML, for example. In the last 30 years I avoided investing in technologies that didn’t seem right to me, and usually I was proven right. JavaScript was the exception.

I think that many Python people acted the same as I.

A month ago I participated in the Django Conference Europe, and I was surprised at how people are approaching the JavaScript problem. This conference was the incentive for me to write this series. What I saw at the conference is the subject for next time.