4 ms·

I completely agree. That something is a linter, of which TypeScript is just one of the many options available. This whole idea of you cannot write a big app in

I completely agree. That something is a linter, of which TypeScript is just one of the many options available. This whole idea of you cannot write a big app in JS is just peddled by those who do not understand, or hate JS. A good linter, proper programming practices, discipline will get you there. Anytime someone peddles a language or framework as a magic bullet to clean code, they're either selling you some snake oil or have drunk too much of some koolaid, imho.

giantDinosaur 7y ago
This is the kind of attitude that has resulted in a million code vulnerabilities in C because the idea that it's inherently unsafe is just an idea 'peddled by people unskilled in its application' (to re-express nicely). It's the kind of attitude which will ignore the many inconsistencies in languages which were the result of historical accident instead of good design because it's just a blind acceptance of the way things turned out to be rather than what they _could_ be. Many who go on about 'discipline' are often creating error prone applications and, ironically, peddling 'discipline' as that very magic bullet to cure all ills. I don't know if I've even seen discipline defined beyond some self-referential 'avoid doing these bad things that our language/environment allows by knowing that they're bad before you make the mistakes that show you they're bad'. Do developers just shrug and accept it as a fundamental design constraint to good programming languages when their booleans add with their integers and concatenate with their strings and give essentially random results? Do they not wonder: is there a system, more fundamental than linting, which can solve many of these issues in a general case?
- orange8 7y ago
  The idea that "A good linter, proper programming practices, discipline will get you there" has resulted in "a million code vulnerabilities in C" !! That is a surprising jump in cause-and-effect logic right there. I do not code any C, but I assure you if I did I'd consider it part of proper programming practice and discipline to write code that avoids those exact vulnerabilities you suggest. But, picking a whole new programming language instead is just lying to yourself, because there is no perfect programming language. None! Zero. Not one, no matter how much in love you are with it. They all have their warts, strengths and weaknesses, and if you are not aware of any in your language of choice, and actively working to avoid and mitigate against them (aka discipline and best practice) then you have fallen prey to exactly what I was talking about: the idea that a framework or language is a magical silver bullet to writing clean code. If you thought I was saying JS (or C, TypeScript, Haskel etc) is this perfect, wonderful language, you completely misunderstood me.
  - nmfisher 7y ago
    > I do not code any C, but I assure you if I did I'd consider it part of proper programming practice and discipline to write code that avoids those exact vulnerabilities you suggest. And yet all of those vulnerabilities came from hundreds of developers who shared the same misplaced confidence in their own abilities. It's the same as hospitals. You can't just say "who needs checklists? Surgeons and assistants should be disciplined enough to not make mistakes in the first place!". In an ideal world they would be, but in this world, they're not and never will be. Not being able to admit this is how you end up with surgery on your left knee when it was meant to be your right. Accept that no-one is 100% perfect, 100% of the time - let alone you - and mould your development around these (very human) failings. "Disciplined programming" will never be as safe as "disciplined programming with guard-rails built into the language". Weigh up the trade-offs - sometimes the performance gain is worth the risk, sometimes it's not.
    - orange8 7y ago
      > And yet all of those vulnerabilities came from hundreds of developers who shared the same misplaced confidence in their own abilities. This is a good example of a straw man argument. A comment about a programming language or framework not being a silver bullet to clean code has suddenly been twisted into a comment about developers with misplaced confidence in their abilities. How exactly does using best practice in and discipline equate to overconfidence?! good practice and discipline ≠ misplaced confidence
      - jolux 7y ago
        You appear to assume that applying good practice and discipline is a route to eliminating these problems rather than mitigating them.
        orange8 7y ago
        > You appear to assume I like your choice of words, but no. I disagree with that assumption.

giantDinosaur 7y ago

This is the kind of attitude that has resulted in a million code vulnerabilities in C because the idea that it's inherently unsafe is just an idea 'peddled by people unskilled in its application' (to re-express nicely). It's the kind of attitude which will ignore the many inconsistencies in languages which were the result of historical accident instead of good design because it's just a blind acceptance of the way things turned out to be rather than what they _could_ be. Many who go on about 'discipline' are often creating error prone applications and, ironically, peddling 'discipline' as that very magic bullet to cure all ills. I don't know if I've even seen discipline defined beyond some self-referential 'avoid doing these bad things that our language/environment allows by knowing that they're bad before you make the mistakes that show you they're bad'. Do developers just shrug and accept it as a fundamental design constraint to good programming languages when their booleans add with their integers and concatenate with their strings and give essentially random results? Do they not wonder: is there a system, more fundamental than linting, which can solve many of these issues in a general case?

orange8 7y ago
The idea that "A good linter, proper programming practices, discipline will get you there" has resulted in "a million code vulnerabilities in C" !! That is a surprising jump in cause-and-effect logic right there. I do not code any C, but I assure you if I did I'd consider it part of proper programming practice and discipline to write code that avoids those exact vulnerabilities you suggest. But, picking a whole new programming language instead is just lying to yourself, because there is no perfect programming language. None! Zero. Not one, no matter how much in love you are with it. They all have their warts, strengths and weaknesses, and if you are not aware of any in your language of choice, and actively working to avoid and mitigate against them (aka discipline and best practice) then you have fallen prey to exactly what I was talking about: the idea that a framework or language is a magical silver bullet to writing clean code. If you thought I was saying JS (or C, TypeScript, Haskel etc) is this perfect, wonderful language, you completely misunderstood me.
- nmfisher 7y ago
  > I do not code any C, but I assure you if I did I'd consider it part of proper programming practice and discipline to write code that avoids those exact vulnerabilities you suggest. And yet all of those vulnerabilities came from hundreds of developers who shared the same misplaced confidence in their own abilities. It's the same as hospitals. You can't just say "who needs checklists? Surgeons and assistants should be disciplined enough to not make mistakes in the first place!". In an ideal world they would be, but in this world, they're not and never will be. Not being able to admit this is how you end up with surgery on your left knee when it was meant to be your right. Accept that no-one is 100% perfect, 100% of the time - let alone you - and mould your development around these (very human) failings. "Disciplined programming" will never be as safe as "disciplined programming with guard-rails built into the language". Weigh up the trade-offs - sometimes the performance gain is worth the risk, sometimes it's not.
  - orange8 7y ago
    > And yet all of those vulnerabilities came from hundreds of developers who shared the same misplaced confidence in their own abilities. This is a good example of a straw man argument. A comment about a programming language or framework not being a silver bullet to clean code has suddenly been twisted into a comment about developers with misplaced confidence in their abilities. How exactly does using best practice in and discipline equate to overconfidence?! good practice and discipline ≠ misplaced confidence
    - jolux 7y ago
      You appear to assume that applying good practice and discipline is a route to eliminating these problems rather than mitigating them.
      - orange8 7y ago
        > You appear to assume I like your choice of words, but no. I disagree with that assumption.