Why there aren’t any Good Tools for JavaScript
Dietrich Kappe has a nice post on the Pathfinder Agile Ajax blog about Bruce Johnsons remarks on the complexity of building tools for dynamically typed languages.
I think its important to note that, along with the halting problem, the reason that dynamically typed languages like javascript don’t have great tools is because they started out as languages for small tasks. Their advantage is that they don’t need complex tools - maybe just a text editor. You can whip up a script, debug, and maintain it very fast.
In contrast, typed languages are designed from the start for large maintainable projects. The extra language features they have are there for more than the support of their tools. They support readability, organization, and compile time error checking.
In other words, why make a tool for a language that wasn’t designed for tools? Why use a scripting language for a large project? Also, why build applications on web technology designed for documents? I can actually answer that last quetion… but another day 
.
