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You know, given the sheer amount of JS that has been written successfully in the last ten years, I think it might be worth asking: is it really needed to contin

You know, given the sheer amount of JS that has been written successfully in the last ten years, I think it might be worth asking: is it really needed to continue mudballing that type of stuff onto the language? Especially with mixins and things, it's really easy to add so much magic to the code that getting up to speed on what something is doing becomes prohibitive. It's really great for flavor-of-the-week frameworks, but long term maintenance can become a nightmare and proper performance tuning difficult. Then again, maybe we don't care about maintenance and performance anymore.

aikah 11y ago
> You know, given the sheer amount of JS that has been written successfully in the last ten years, I think it might be worth asking: is it really needed to continue mudballing that type of stuff onto the language? That's a good question. If it helps write a specific pattern and make it more readable I think it's worth it. People are going to write these stuff anyway, why not help making things more readable for anybody else ? it's not going to change the nature of javascript, I'd argue that things like proxies or decorators are far more questionable than multiple inheritance, yet they made/are making it to the spec. Nobody can deny Python code looks usually clean and mostly readable. Nobody can deny that Javascript code is often unreadable because ES3/5 developers didn't have the syntax to convey specific ideas in a eloquent way(thus all the prototype plumbing, module pattern and co that made js code look like brainfuck,don't even get me started on ninja coding).
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  Javascript is not readable to you because you're attempting to apply OO patterns to it. Javascript is not an OO language, it doesn't work like that. It is an incredibly powerful and elegant language, please take the time to learn how it works and appreciate its beauty. Then by all means make suggestions about how it should be changed. But only then, please. Not all languages would be improved by being "more like Python".
  - aikah 11y ago
    > Javascript is not an OO language, it doesn't work like that. What ? it certainly is today with the "class" syntax. Or it is like saying neither Ruby or Python are object oriented. > elegant language, Elegance is in the eye of the beholder
    - angersock 11y ago
      Minor point of order...Ruby is OO because it very much follows the Smalltalk-style message-as-function-invocation pattern. Javascript (at least before ES6) is perhaps too minimal in its language affordances to qualify for "true" OO status.
    - marcus_holmes 11y ago
      there's a lot of people who objected to adding "class" syntax to Javascript purely for this reason. Javascript objects are not the same things as Python (or Smalltalk) objects, they don't work the same way and were never intended to. There is a good case to be made that Smalltalk-type OO with multiple inheritance (like Python) is a bad thing. Javascript's type of OO is a good way of avoiding that bad thing. I agree that elegance is purely subjective, and if you choose not to find javascript elegant because it lacks a certain "python-ness" then that's entirely your decision. However I would encourage you to expand your horizons a bit and stretch your understanding a little more.

aikah 11y ago

> You know, given the sheer amount of JS that has been written successfully in the last ten years, I think it might be worth asking: is it really needed to continue mudballing that type of stuff onto the language? That's a good question. If it helps write a specific pattern and make it more readable I think it's worth it. People are going to write these stuff anyway, why not help making things more readable for anybody else ? it's not going to change the nature of javascript, I'd argue that things like proxies or decorators are far more questionable than multiple inheritance, yet they made/are making it to the spec. Nobody can deny Python code looks usually clean and mostly readable. Nobody can deny that Javascript code is often unreadable because ES3/5 developers didn't have the syntax to convey specific ideas in a eloquent way(thus all the prototype plumbing, module pattern and co that made js code look like brainfuck,don't even get me started on ninja coding).

marcus_holmes 11y ago
Javascript is not readable to you because you're attempting to apply OO patterns to it. Javascript is not an OO language, it doesn't work like that. It is an incredibly powerful and elegant language, please take the time to learn how it works and appreciate its beauty. Then by all means make suggestions about how it should be changed. But only then, please. Not all languages would be improved by being "more like Python".
- aikah 11y ago
  > Javascript is not an OO language, it doesn't work like that. What ? it certainly is today with the "class" syntax. Or it is like saying neither Ruby or Python are object oriented. > elegant language, Elegance is in the eye of the beholder
  - angersock 11y ago
    Minor point of order...Ruby is OO because it very much follows the Smalltalk-style message-as-function-invocation pattern. Javascript (at least before ES6) is perhaps too minimal in its language affordances to qualify for "true" OO status.
  - marcus_holmes 11y ago
    there's a lot of people who objected to adding "class" syntax to Javascript purely for this reason. Javascript objects are not the same things as Python (or Smalltalk) objects, they don't work the same way and were never intended to. There is a good case to be made that Smalltalk-type OO with multiple inheritance (like Python) is a bad thing. Javascript's type of OO is a good way of avoiding that bad thing. I agree that elegance is purely subjective, and if you choose not to find javascript elegant because it lacks a certain "python-ness" then that's entirely your decision. However I would encourage you to expand your horizons a bit and stretch your understanding a little more.