I Love JavaScript (Sometimes)

News:

From Business Week Big Blue's Global Labs

Building a global chain of "collaboratories." Good luck, IBM. May I loan you my copy of Fumbling the Future?

JavaScript:

Something like this:

    btn.onclick = click_func;
    document.body.appendChild( btn )

That, obviously, will never work. This will:

    document.body.appendChild( btn )
    btn.onclick = click_func;

Did I say "obviously"? That, obviously, was sarcasm.

When coding you exhaust all the rational possibilities first. With code still failing, you move on to the semi-rational possibilities.

After exhausting the rational possibilities, I briefly considered DLing the source for Mozilla, to just take a look for myself at the troubled area. Briefly. Just long enough to learn that there are about 2.5 million lines of code there.

It was Saturday, the 15th, when my Ruby writing ground to a halt with The Bug from Hell. I believe I can proceed again, albeit with the simplicity of document.write() in the rear view mirror.

Started yesterday building tables the slow way. Create a table element and attach it to the body of the document. Create a row element and attach it to the table element. Create cell elements and attach them to the row element. Create contents and insert or attach (depending on type) content to the cells. On to the next row.

My UI includes a table with a table. It's very complex so that the user will think it simple. It took a half day to build it with document.write() . I'm thinking five times the code, and five times the time, doing it the slow way. That, of course, doesn't allow for additional "gotcha"s.

Anybody going to bet against more "gotcha"s?