4 ms·

Am I the only one to think throwing "difficult to parse" as criticism to a programming language like JS is disingenuous? It could be an argument to criticize c

Am I the only one to think throwing "difficult to parse" as criticism to a programming language like JS is disingenuous? It could be an argument to criticize changes proposed for a nimble performance-oriented language like Lua where "parseability" means hackability as a feature for developers working on the language & core tooling itself. But it seems to me that the bulk of the users of a popular / high-level language like JS is people trying to get things done, not tools developers hacking on JS itself. "Difficult to parse" semantic constructs may be a hurdle for the 1% doing the parsing, but they mean more syntax goodness to help the the other 99% programmers do things pleasantly and succinctly. I've heard Python is difficult to parse, too, but behind this difficulty there's syntax sugar helping your average developer. Much like Python list comprehensions, context managers and decorators, these ES6 features make the task harder for tool builders, but they help me as a developer.

coldtea 11y ago
>Am I the only one to think throwing "difficult to parse" as criticism to a programming language like JS is disingenuous? (...) "Difficult to parse" semantic constructs may be a hurdle for the 1% doing the parsing, but they mean more syntax goodness to help the the other 99% programmers do things pleasantly and succinctly. You probably got it wrong. When he says "difficult to parse", he means for the programmers using JS -- not for people working on JS parsers. Besides compiler construction, "parse" is also commonly used to mean "read/understand" some new code.
- ronjouch 11y ago
  Oh right, thanks for pointing this out :) In this case, I'd still contradict OP, arguing the same as stevebmark did in a sibling comment: "[...] these syntax details are well thought out, practical, and improve the readability and writability of the language [...]. None of them seen "unnecessary" and teams I've worked on echo this experience."

coldtea 11y ago

>Am I the only one to think throwing "difficult to parse" as criticism to a programming language like JS is disingenuous? (...) "Difficult to parse" semantic constructs may be a hurdle for the 1% doing the parsing, but they mean more syntax goodness to help the the other 99% programmers do things pleasantly and succinctly. You probably got it wrong. When he says "difficult to parse", he means for the programmers using JS -- not for people working on JS parsers. Besides compiler construction, "parse" is also commonly used to mean "read/understand" some new code.

ronjouch 11y ago
Oh right, thanks for pointing this out :) In this case, I'd still contradict OP, arguing the same as stevebmark did in a sibling comment: "[...] these syntax details are well thought out, practical, and improve the readability and writability of the language [...]. None of them seen "unnecessary" and teams I've worked on echo this experience."