5 ms·

Node-noop – Implements a noop function

45 points by willvarfar 10y ago

noway421 10y ago
While this is an extreme case of course, packages by themselves are quite cheap (apart from installing times), and usually if the author tries to keep the dependencies in check it doesn't really create a mess.
- joss82 10y ago
  In practice though, even the smallest toy project will pull out hundred tiny dependencies. This is why funny stories like leftpadgate can happen. Relying on an external dependency is a net win if and only if the time gain overcomes the loss of control. Maybe regrouping all these tiny libraries under an umbrella project (lets call it node-utils or js-tinytools or whatever) will mitigate the problem? This project will not have any external dependency though will be used by most of the projects and ergo might be watched with much more attention.
  - richthegeek 10y ago
    Grouping all these tiny libraries under an umbrella project will just end up like PHP. No consistency, and various levels of repetition and redundancy and quality. Having them separate like this at least means that if one library doesn't implement things 'right' you can switch to another easily.
    - joss82 10y ago
      PHP lacked the namespacing in the first place, which made the API messy and flat. Look at python (or ruby)'s standard library, it's awesome, and of high quality (most of the time, see urllib/requests for a counterexample).
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    > Relying on an external dependency is a net win if and only if the time gain overcomes the loss of control. Everybody should remember this
  - Illniyar 10y ago
    No, leftpadgate happend because you can delete packages from npm. The size of the package is irrelevent.
  - jwl 10y ago
    > In practice though, even the smallest toy project will pull out hundred tiny dependencies. I had a problem with running out of inodes on my server because of the massive number of files that end up in node_modules for even a smallish project.
    - joss82 10y ago
      No kidding? This is impressive! Did you write about it somewhere?
      - jasonpbecker 10y ago
        This happens constantly on older versions of Docker.
        BigJono 10y ago
        Another classic is installing one dependency with NPM and having it blow up because it's hit the 255 character limit for file paths on Windows due to nested dependencies.
    - erinaceousjones 10y ago
      NPM caused horrendous issues in my dev environment a while back. I was developing on a Windows 7 machine with my Node environment in a VirtualBox VM. I was keeping my code in a VirtualBox shared folder so I could edit it in my IDEs on the windows side and then easily run `npm install` etc. on the linux side. Turns out, the combination of vboxsf and ntfs masquerading as a linux filesystem is not without bugs- Sometimes, the directory depths that npm reached caused the filesystem to "soft crash", where it would just fail to do operations on files, meaning you had to run `npm install` a few times to actually grab all the dependencies. Other times, it caused the host machine to blue screen. One of the times this happened, it had the side effect of irreversibly corrupting my favourite programming font (Fira Code) for all JetBrains IDEs on that Windows install. Not so much a problem now I'm not being forced to develop in Windows. But even though I dug up bugs in unrelated pieces of software / the host OS kernel, npm was still pushing that software to the limits with that crazy recursive directory structure it was attempting to build. You don't get this shit with python!
bshimmin 10y ago
I really want to assume this is a joke - and yet I'm left totally uncertain!
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  // Here we benchmark node-noop against various other things that are known // to do nothing to see if we have the fastest way of doing nothing.
- adnanh 10y ago
  Yes, it is a joke, check the tags at the github repo: ironically-shitty javascript left-pad-level-dumb-module noop parody satire
- viraptor 10y ago
  It is, however the npm package "noop" that it mentions seems to be actually used... https://www.npmjs.com/package/noop https://www.npmjs.com/package/noop > 202 downloads in the last month > Dependents (3): meta-noop, scrappers, npl
  - nishs 10y ago
    > 202 downloads in the last month Usually, a 100 of those would be from bots by sites that also host npm package information.
    - viraptor 10y ago
      https://www.npmjs.com/package/meta-noop https://www.npmjs.com/package/meta-noop is 10 months old and got only 6 downloads last month, so I don't think it's entirely background noise. https://www.npmjs.com/package/scrappers https://www.npmjs.com/package/scrappers which depends on noop looks like an actual, real, useful package.
ddebernardy 10y ago
Isn't this typical of what you get when you have a language that's easy for newcomers to pick up? At one point it was PHP. Then it was Rails. Of late it's been Node. I'm sure Windows users might have some old VB war stories. (Admittedly, I'm not sure what to make of the Java StackOverflow tag, seeing that it's also is a sewers. Presumably school or Android related.) Edit: good related reading: http://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-worse.html http://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-w... > Redundancy sucks. Redundancy always means duplicated efforts, and sometimes interoperability problems. But dependencies are worse. The only reasonable thing to depend on is a full-fledged, real module, not an amorphous bunch of code. You can usually look at a problem and guess quite well if its solution has good chances to become a real module, with a real owner, with a stable interface making all its users happy enough. If these chances are low, pick redundancy. And estimate those chances conservatively, too. Redundancy is bad, but dependencies can actually paralyze you. I say – kill dependencies first.
- sharpercoder 10y ago
  Note that this goes for all levels: variables, functions, methods, classes, namespaces, libraries, software packages, systems, business (world?).
- mstade 10y ago
  That is an excellent quote that says so much of what I've been trying to convey to my peers for some time, but much terser and more eloquently. Thank you for sharing!
moomin 10y ago
I keep thinking we've reached peak npm, but node.js keeps surprising me. :)
xatxat 10y ago
This one is also nice: https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 It has a noop factory :-)
- twsted 10y ago
  See also the issues: https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3/issues https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3/issues
  - koolba 10y ago
    What's up with the funky labels?
    - drinchev 10y ago
      It's called Zalgo [1]. I'm surprised that GitHub allows Zalgo characters in the issues. 1 : https://eeemo.net https://eeemo.net
      - gpderetta 10y ago
        There is no such a thing as zalgo characters. It is plain unicode (utf-8 shaped), in particular it is an abuse of combining characters. Disabling those can cripple non-english languages.
        Sunset 10y ago
        It's possible to look at how "overloaded" the combination characters are and trigger a filter if above a certain level. I doubt non-english languages quite overload as much as "zalgo" generators.
        drinchev 10y ago
        I'm actually not sure where the term Zalgo comes from. I know the effect is abused Unicode feature, but was never sure how does the term "Zalgo" end up explaining it.
liuyanghejerry 10y ago
This is nice. Now we finally have a template npm project for everything, with no side-effect.
peterkelly 10y ago
There needs to be a TypeScript definition file accompanying it, as well as an Angular module so that I can import it via dependency injection.
- k__ 10y ago
  Lets write a React component for it, quick! import {noop} from 'node-noop' export default () => <noscript>{noop()}</noscript>
  - mstade 10y ago
    The `<noscript>` had me laughing out loud in the coffee shop.
pygy_ 10y ago
As long as we discuss noops, JavaScript provides one out of the box as `Function.prototype`. It can be called and does nothing. No need to create a new function object when you need a noop.
- bpicolo 10y ago
  And it's even immutable. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Function/prototype#Description https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... ~So functional~
imcotton 10y ago
Guys, let's be honest, there are also: [1] https://api.jquery.com/jquery.noop/ https://api.jquery.com/jquery.noop/ [2] https://lodash.com/docs/#noop https://lodash.com/docs/#noop [3] http://underscorejs.org/#noop http://underscorejs.org/#noop [4] http://reactivex.io/rxjs/file/es6/util/noop.js.html http://reactivex.io/rxjs/file/es6/util/noop.js.html [5] https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/function/angular.noop https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/function/angular.noop edited: formatting
- letientai299 10y ago
  Let's me help you to add more in the list: https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/noop2 https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/noop2 https://github.com/supershabam/nop https://github.com/supershabam/nop https://github.com/mattdesl/no-op https://github.com/mattdesl/no-op
- mping 10y ago
  Those are not modules afaik

45 points by willvarfar 10y ago

While this is an extreme case of course, packages by themselves are quite cheap (apart from installing times), and usually if the author tries to keep the dependencies in check it doesn't really create a mess.

joss82 10y ago
In practice though, even the smallest toy project will pull out hundred tiny dependencies. This is why funny stories like leftpadgate can happen. Relying on an external dependency is a net win if and only if the time gain overcomes the loss of control. Maybe regrouping all these tiny libraries under an umbrella project (lets call it node-utils or js-tinytools or whatever) will mitigate the problem? This project will not have any external dependency though will be used by most of the projects and ergo might be watched with much more attention.
- richthegeek 10y ago
  Grouping all these tiny libraries under an umbrella project will just end up like PHP. No consistency, and various levels of repetition and redundancy and quality. Having them separate like this at least means that if one library doesn't implement things 'right' you can switch to another easily.
  - joss82 10y ago
    PHP lacked the namespacing in the first place, which made the API messy and flat. Look at python (or ruby)'s standard library, it's awesome, and of high quality (most of the time, see urllib/requests for a counterexample).
- raverbashing 10y ago
  > Relying on an external dependency is a net win if and only if the time gain overcomes the loss of control. Everybody should remember this
- Illniyar 10y ago
  No, leftpadgate happend because you can delete packages from npm. The size of the package is irrelevent.
- jwl 10y ago
  > In practice though, even the smallest toy project will pull out hundred tiny dependencies. I had a problem with running out of inodes on my server because of the massive number of files that end up in node_modules for even a smallish project.
  - joss82 10y ago
    No kidding? This is impressive! Did you write about it somewhere?
    - jasonpbecker 10y ago
      This happens constantly on older versions of Docker.
      - BigJono 10y ago
        Another classic is installing one dependency with NPM and having it blow up because it's hit the 255 character limit for file paths on Windows due to nested dependencies.
  - erinaceousjones 10y ago
    NPM caused horrendous issues in my dev environment a while back. I was developing on a Windows 7 machine with my Node environment in a VirtualBox VM. I was keeping my code in a VirtualBox shared folder so I could edit it in my IDEs on the windows side and then easily run `npm install` etc. on the linux side. Turns out, the combination of vboxsf and ntfs masquerading as a linux filesystem is not without bugs- Sometimes, the directory depths that npm reached caused the filesystem to "soft crash", where it would just fail to do operations on files, meaning you had to run `npm install` a few times to actually grab all the dependencies. Other times, it caused the host machine to blue screen. One of the times this happened, it had the side effect of irreversibly corrupting my favourite programming font (Fira Code) for all JetBrains IDEs on that Windows install. Not so much a problem now I'm not being forced to develop in Windows. But even though I dug up bugs in unrelated pieces of software / the host OS kernel, npm was still pushing that software to the limits with that crazy recursive directory structure it was attempting to build. You don't get this shit with python!

bshimmin 10y ago

I really want to assume this is a joke - and yet I'm left totally uncertain!

cmrdporcupine 10y ago
// Here we benchmark node-noop against various other things that are known // to do nothing to see if we have the fastest way of doing nothing.
adnanh 10y ago
Yes, it is a joke, check the tags at the github repo: ironically-shitty javascript left-pad-level-dumb-module noop parody satire
viraptor 10y ago
It is, however the npm package "noop" that it mentions seems to be actually used... https://www.npmjs.com/package/noop https://www.npmjs.com/package/noop > 202 downloads in the last month > Dependents (3): meta-noop, scrappers, npl
- nishs 10y ago
  > 202 downloads in the last month Usually, a 100 of those would be from bots by sites that also host npm package information.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    https://www.npmjs.com/package/meta-noop https://www.npmjs.com/package/meta-noop is 10 months old and got only 6 downloads last month, so I don't think it's entirely background noise. https://www.npmjs.com/package/scrappers https://www.npmjs.com/package/scrappers which depends on noop looks like an actual, real, useful package.

ddebernardy 10y ago

Isn't this typical of what you get when you have a language that's easy for newcomers to pick up? At one point it was PHP. Then it was Rails. Of late it's been Node. I'm sure Windows users might have some old VB war stories. (Admittedly, I'm not sure what to make of the Java StackOverflow tag, seeing that it's also is a sewers. Presumably school or Android related.) Edit: good related reading: http://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-worse.html http://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-w... > Redundancy sucks. Redundancy always means duplicated efforts, and sometimes interoperability problems. But dependencies are worse. The only reasonable thing to depend on is a full-fledged, real module, not an amorphous bunch of code. You can usually look at a problem and guess quite well if its solution has good chances to become a real module, with a real owner, with a stable interface making all its users happy enough. If these chances are low, pick redundancy. And estimate those chances conservatively, too. Redundancy is bad, but dependencies can actually paralyze you. I say – kill dependencies first.

sharpercoder 10y ago
Note that this goes for all levels: variables, functions, methods, classes, namespaces, libraries, software packages, systems, business (world?).
mstade 10y ago
That is an excellent quote that says so much of what I've been trying to convey to my peers for some time, but much terser and more eloquently. Thank you for sharing!

moomin 10y ago

I keep thinking we've reached peak npm, but node.js keeps surprising me. :)

xatxat 10y ago

This one is also nice: https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 It has a noop factory :-)

twsted 10y ago
See also the issues: https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3/issues https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3/issues
- koolba 10y ago
  What's up with the funky labels?
  - drinchev 10y ago
    It's called Zalgo [1]. I'm surprised that GitHub allows Zalgo characters in the issues. 1 : https://eeemo.net https://eeemo.net
    - gpderetta 10y ago
      There is no such a thing as zalgo characters. It is plain unicode (utf-8 shaped), in particular it is an abuse of combining characters. Disabling those can cripple non-english languages.
      - Sunset 10y ago
        It's possible to look at how "overloaded" the combination characters are and trigger a filter if above a certain level. I doubt non-english languages quite overload as much as "zalgo" generators.
      - drinchev 10y ago
        I'm actually not sure where the term Zalgo comes from. I know the effect is abused Unicode feature, but was never sure how does the term "Zalgo" end up explaining it.

liuyanghejerry 10y ago

This is nice. Now we finally have a template npm project for everything, with no side-effect.

peterkelly 10y ago

There needs to be a TypeScript definition file accompanying it, as well as an Angular module so that I can import it via dependency injection.

k__ 10y ago
Lets write a React component for it, quick! import {noop} from 'node-noop' export default () => <noscript>{noop()}</noscript>
- mstade 10y ago
  The `<noscript>` had me laughing out loud in the coffee shop.

pygy_ 10y ago

As long as we discuss noops, JavaScript provides one out of the box as `Function.prototype`. It can be called and does nothing. No need to create a new function object when you need a noop.

bpicolo 10y ago
And it's even immutable. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Function/prototype#Description https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... ~So functional~

imcotton 10y ago

Guys, let's be honest, there are also: [1] https://api.jquery.com/jquery.noop/ https://api.jquery.com/jquery.noop/ [2] https://lodash.com/docs/#noop https://lodash.com/docs/#noop [3] http://underscorejs.org/#noop http://underscorejs.org/#noop [4] http://reactivex.io/rxjs/file/es6/util/noop.js.html http://reactivex.io/rxjs/file/es6/util/noop.js.html [5] https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/function/angular.noop https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/function/angular.noop edited: formatting

letientai299 10y ago
Let's me help you to add more in the list: https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 https://github.com/sindresorhus/noop3 https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/noop2 https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/noop2 https://github.com/supershabam/nop https://github.com/supershabam/nop https://github.com/mattdesl/no-op https://github.com/mattdesl/no-op
mping 10y ago
Those are not modules afaik