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By this logic, every Stack Overflow snippet should be a module. I'm almost hesitant to suggest this since many people who read this will be capable of building

By this logic, every Stack Overflow snippet should be a module. I'm almost hesitant to suggest this since many people who read this will be capable of building such a thing.

Klathmon 11y ago
I'm not saying that everything should be a module, but that well designed, well tested bits of code should be modules. These 17 lines had 100% test coverage and were used by a stupidly large amount of people (read: battle tested), why not use it? As is pointed out elsewhere in this thread, echo.c is roughly the same size, does that mean it's not a worthy program?
- ploxiln 11y ago
  "echo" is not versioned and delivered on its own. It's part of gnu coreutils (which contains ~ 100 utilities), or part of various BSD core distributions (more than 100 utilities, plus the kernel and libc), and also built-in to shells.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    IMO that doesn't change anything. The fact that in JS land it would be it's a standalone module means you get more choice in what you need (no need to pull down 100 programs if you only need 1 or 2).
    - Sanddancer 11y ago
      You have the same amount of choice. There's no reason that you have to use the other hundred pieces of the package. In the Unix world, there's nothing precluding you from deciding to use the FreeBSD version of tar but keeping the rest of the GNU utilities there.
      - Klathmon 11y ago
        I guess it's a philosophical difference. But to be fair this would have the same outcome if left-pad were part of a library that included another 50+ libs (that he also wrote and published, and subsequently un-published today).
    - ufmace 11y ago
      More choice, but now you need 50 different modules from 50 different authors to duplicate what would be in one good standard library, any of which could have bugs or be pulled out from under you for a multitude of reasons that are beyond your control. Choice can be a bad thing too - when there are 10 different modules for doing a moderately complex thing, you have to figure out which one is best for your project, and whether it's still actively maintained, bugs are fixed, how do they feel about making breaking changes, etc.
      - Klathmon 11y ago
        >now you need 50 different modules from 50 different authors Not necessarily, take a look at lodash and friends. There is nothing stopping bundling of tiny modules into big "libraries" to be used. As for the rest, you need to do that validation anyway. But if it were bundled in a large library there is MUCH more code that you need to review. with something like the module "left-pad", it's a no brainer to use the library. I know that it's under an EXTREMELY open license, the code is really small, and by vendoring your dependencies (you are vendoring your dependencies right?) this whole issue would have been a 5-10 minute fix that only needed to be done when you want to upgrade your dependencies next time.
      - Tyr42 11y ago
        But also, if you're shipping things to users browsers, please cut out all the stuff you don't use. I don't want to download 100 extra module's worth of JS code because it was bundled.
- takno 11y ago
  Realistically 17 lines of code is total overkill for this function. In many cases you could achieve the same thing more efficiently in a single line.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    Feel free to show a smaller implementation that's more efficient. I've seen several "one liners" in this thread already, and most of them either blow up when something that's not a string is passed in (regardless of how you view strict typing, js doesn't have it and this shouldn't happen), or are extremely slow comparatively (most of them creating and destroying an array every time they are called). Plus this has 100% test coverage (even as trivial as it is, it still counts), and is "battle tested" (something like 2.5 million installs per month counts for something). Sorry, but i'll stick to left-pad vs 20-seconds of thought one-liner.
    - ars 11y ago
      > Feel free to show a smaller implementation that's more efficient. How's this: function leftpad (str, len, ch) { ch = (len -= str.length) <= 0 ? '' : !ch && ch !== 0 ? ' ' : String(ch); while (--len > 0) ch += ch[0]; return ch + String(str); } No local variables, less manipulation of the input string, the string grows at the tail which is more efficient, and the code is much shorter. (With a bit of work you can use the longer ch string that is built to reduce the number of string appends even more by appending multiple characters at once. Although probably not worth it for this function.)
      - akie 11y ago
        No offense, but that code is much more difficult to understand. If your goal is to minimize the amount of lines, then you succeeded. If the goal is to produce both correct and readable code, then there's room for improvement.
        scrabble 11y ago
        If you are talking about a module that everyone just includes and expects to work, then I'd imagine the goal would be a combination of correct and efficient, not readable.
- vacri 11y ago
  Why not just put it into the core? Why should it even be a module at this point?
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    Because in JavaScript there are many different implementations of engines, and they run on all kinds of stuff. Adding something to the standard is not a small task, and it means that it's now extra code that needs to be installed on practically every single PC. And that doesn't remove the need for a library like this (or your own implementation) for a long time because you can't rely on a brand new release to be available for everyone.

By this logic, every Stack Overflow snippet should be a module. I'm almost hesitant to suggest this since many people who read this will be capable of building such a thing.

Klathmon 11y ago

I'm not saying that everything should be a module, but that well designed, well tested bits of code should be modules. These 17 lines had 100% test coverage and were used by a stupidly large amount of people (read: battle tested), why not use it? As is pointed out elsewhere in this thread, echo.c is roughly the same size, does that mean it's not a worthy program?

ploxiln 11y ago
"echo" is not versioned and delivered on its own. It's part of gnu coreutils (which contains ~ 100 utilities), or part of various BSD core distributions (more than 100 utilities, plus the kernel and libc), and also built-in to shells.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  IMO that doesn't change anything. The fact that in JS land it would be it's a standalone module means you get more choice in what you need (no need to pull down 100 programs if you only need 1 or 2).
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    You have the same amount of choice. There's no reason that you have to use the other hundred pieces of the package. In the Unix world, there's nothing precluding you from deciding to use the FreeBSD version of tar but keeping the rest of the GNU utilities there.
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      I guess it's a philosophical difference. But to be fair this would have the same outcome if left-pad were part of a library that included another 50+ libs (that he also wrote and published, and subsequently un-published today).
  - ufmace 11y ago
    More choice, but now you need 50 different modules from 50 different authors to duplicate what would be in one good standard library, any of which could have bugs or be pulled out from under you for a multitude of reasons that are beyond your control. Choice can be a bad thing too - when there are 10 different modules for doing a moderately complex thing, you have to figure out which one is best for your project, and whether it's still actively maintained, bugs are fixed, how do they feel about making breaking changes, etc.
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      >now you need 50 different modules from 50 different authors Not necessarily, take a look at lodash and friends. There is nothing stopping bundling of tiny modules into big "libraries" to be used. As for the rest, you need to do that validation anyway. But if it were bundled in a large library there is MUCH more code that you need to review. with something like the module "left-pad", it's a no brainer to use the library. I know that it's under an EXTREMELY open license, the code is really small, and by vendoring your dependencies (you are vendoring your dependencies right?) this whole issue would have been a 5-10 minute fix that only needed to be done when you want to upgrade your dependencies next time.
    - Tyr42 11y ago
      But also, if you're shipping things to users browsers, please cut out all the stuff you don't use. I don't want to download 100 extra module's worth of JS code because it was bundled.
takno 11y ago
Realistically 17 lines of code is total overkill for this function. In many cases you could achieve the same thing more efficiently in a single line.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  Feel free to show a smaller implementation that's more efficient. I've seen several "one liners" in this thread already, and most of them either blow up when something that's not a string is passed in (regardless of how you view strict typing, js doesn't have it and this shouldn't happen), or are extremely slow comparatively (most of them creating and destroying an array every time they are called). Plus this has 100% test coverage (even as trivial as it is, it still counts), and is "battle tested" (something like 2.5 million installs per month counts for something). Sorry, but i'll stick to left-pad vs 20-seconds of thought one-liner.
  - ars 11y ago
    > Feel free to show a smaller implementation that's more efficient. How's this: function leftpad (str, len, ch) { ch = (len -= str.length) <= 0 ? '' : !ch && ch !== 0 ? ' ' : String(ch); while (--len > 0) ch += ch[0]; return ch + String(str); } No local variables, less manipulation of the input string, the string grows at the tail which is more efficient, and the code is much shorter. (With a bit of work you can use the longer ch string that is built to reduce the number of string appends even more by appending multiple characters at once. Although probably not worth it for this function.)
    - akie 11y ago
      No offense, but that code is much more difficult to understand. If your goal is to minimize the amount of lines, then you succeeded. If the goal is to produce both correct and readable code, then there's room for improvement.
      - scrabble 11y ago
        If you are talking about a module that everyone just includes and expects to work, then I'd imagine the goal would be a combination of correct and efficient, not readable.
vacri 11y ago
Why not just put it into the core? Why should it even be a module at this point?
- Klathmon 11y ago
  Because in JavaScript there are many different implementations of engines, and they run on all kinds of stuff. Adding something to the standard is not a small task, and it means that it's now extra code that needs to be installed on practically every single PC. And that doesn't remove the need for a library like this (or your own implementation) for a long time because you can't rely on a brand new release to be available for everyone.