3 ms·

Classes in JavaScript are just syntactic sugar around prototypes.

by SzamarCsacsi 7y ago

BostonFern 7y ago
Ironically, what it really needs is explicit syntax for prototypes.
- alharith 7y ago
  I don't think it did. Those of us who bothered to spend more than a glancing look at prototypes figured them out pretty easily. Including Classes in JavaScript feel like pandering: there really wasn't much to directly gain from them, but they threw them in there anyways because the TC knew it'd gain JavaScript some popularity.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Wha? That's a take. Here's mine: ES6 classes are wildly smart. They provide the benefits of prototypical inheritance--you can just reach into the thing and do what you want to do!--while making it way easier for many developers to read and parse in short order, while reducing the difficulty spike in moving to JavaScript (or, today, TypeScript). "Pandering". Right. I can write old-style object prototypes. It makes my eyes bleed and makes me make more mistakes. So I'm just not gonna do that anymore.
    - alharith 7y ago
      It makes your eyes bleed? If you thought mine was a take... Anyways, let's not act like ES6 classes aren't without their slew of issues, obscure syntax, and most importantly, problems when it comes to transpiling and backwards compatibility: https://medium.com/@WebReflection/a-case-for-js-classes-without-classes-9e60b3b5992#.oh0mweilj https://medium.com/@WebReflection/a-case-for-js-classes-with...
      - eropple 7y ago
        "Let's" not, but I don't care about much of anything in that article. I haven't written something that targets a browser that isn't ES2015 since...2016. It's 2020. Things move on.
        alharith 7y ago
        Great attitude. Let's move on and leave 13% of the global internet population behind.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    It depends somewhat on when you tried to learn prototypes in JS. The time before Firefox implementation detail `__proto__` leaked into general web platform usage had some rough spots, as the big obvious example to mind. It still took almost too long after that before `Object.getPrototypeOf()` and `Object.setPrototypeOf()` were standardized. Admittedly "the prototype of this instance" shouldn't always be accessed and/or manipulated directly in "proper" prototype-oriented code, but there are a lot of practical cases that show up where it ends up being useful.

Classes in JavaScript are just syntactic sugar around prototypes.

BostonFern 7y ago

Ironically, what it really needs is explicit syntax for prototypes.

alharith 7y ago
I don't think it did. Those of us who bothered to spend more than a glancing look at prototypes figured them out pretty easily. Including Classes in JavaScript feel like pandering: there really wasn't much to directly gain from them, but they threw them in there anyways because the TC knew it'd gain JavaScript some popularity.
- eropple 7y ago
  Wha? That's a take. Here's mine: ES6 classes are wildly smart. They provide the benefits of prototypical inheritance--you can just reach into the thing and do what you want to do!--while making it way easier for many developers to read and parse in short order, while reducing the difficulty spike in moving to JavaScript (or, today, TypeScript). "Pandering". Right. I can write old-style object prototypes. It makes my eyes bleed and makes me make more mistakes. So I'm just not gonna do that anymore.
  - alharith 7y ago
    It makes your eyes bleed? If you thought mine was a take... Anyways, let's not act like ES6 classes aren't without their slew of issues, obscure syntax, and most importantly, problems when it comes to transpiling and backwards compatibility: https://medium.com/@WebReflection/a-case-for-js-classes-without-classes-9e60b3b5992#.oh0mweilj https://medium.com/@WebReflection/a-case-for-js-classes-with...
    - eropple 7y ago
      "Let's" not, but I don't care about much of anything in that article. I haven't written something that targets a browser that isn't ES2015 since...2016. It's 2020. Things move on.
      - alharith 7y ago
        Great attitude. Let's move on and leave 13% of the global internet population behind.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  It depends somewhat on when you tried to learn prototypes in JS. The time before Firefox implementation detail `__proto__` leaked into general web platform usage had some rough spots, as the big obvious example to mind. It still took almost too long after that before `Object.getPrototypeOf()` and `Object.setPrototypeOf()` were standardized. Admittedly "the prototype of this instance" shouldn't always be accessed and/or manipulated directly in "proper" prototype-oriented code, but there are a lot of practical cases that show up where it ends up being useful.