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> Others face big disruptions to their coding world only occasionally (your Enterprise Java programmer with a 20 year career in monolithic app development who n

by jart 6y ago

> Others face big disruptions to their coding world only occasionally (your Enterprise Java programmer with a 20 year career in monolithic app development who now lives in a brave new world of microservices, CI/CD, devops, oh my!) The industry has a habit of calling things like this technical skills, but I really think that culture is the more appropriate word. Things like lodash vs. for loop, or imperative vs. functional. It's culture it ain't science and it isn't a job skill. These are just things that people choose to believe and the only ones who need to learn at a breakneck pace are those who value staying in fashion.

jhardy54 6y ago
> lodash vs for loop One of these things is not like the other! Lodash is a library if JS idioms that can't be neatly expressed in simple constructs like for loops. JS as a language is often difficult to work with because it lacks these idioms, and using Lodash really can't be compared to "for loops". Happy to answer any questions if you have them.
- jart 6y ago
  If you're the author of lodash I'd say it's had an impressive impact. However your choice of words betrays you. How can you define neatness without taking culture and aesthetics into consideration. Lodash doesn't make possible any things that weren't possible before. It just provides a succinct notation for common use-cases with for loops. Which use-cases are common depends on your programming culture. Which library looks most fashionable at solving them isn't that much different from reading Vogue. Even comparing it to for loops is in itself biased, because there are other cultures that are able to do looping without looping at all, like how John McCarthy favored recursive functions. Then the Common Lisp crew invented their own preferred predecessor to lodash called the LOOP macro. I'd bet Urbit does something even crazier.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    > * Lodash doesn't make possible any things that weren't possible before.* That applies to literally all libraries. If it's written in the same language, it cannot do anything that you couldn't also do without it.
    - jart 6y ago
      You're darn right that it applies to all frameworks. However let's not forget about system libraries, which do in fact limit what's possible with your universal turing machine. That has more to do with politics than culture.
  - jhardy54 6y ago
    I'm not the author of Lodash. You should take a look at the API, you'll quickly notice that it's not a for loop library: https://lodash.com/docs/#cloneDeep https://lodash.com/docs/#cloneDeep Some of these functions have been added to JavaScript and are no longer compelling, but many of these still fill voids in the language. Sure, you could write each of these yourself, but Lodash has more eyeballs (better docs, fewer bugs, better performance, etc).
onion2k 6y ago
It's culture it ain't science and it isn't a job skill. Negotiating how you build things with the rest of the team, especially when there are differing opinions about how to solve particular problems, or what programming approach to use, absolutely is a job skill. You have to contribute to that 'culture', or manage it if you're leading. It's a very important skill.

by jart 6y ago

jhardy54 6y ago

> lodash vs for loop One of these things is not like the other! Lodash is a library if JS idioms that can't be neatly expressed in simple constructs like for loops. JS as a language is often difficult to work with because it lacks these idioms, and using Lodash really can't be compared to "for loops". Happy to answer any questions if you have them.

jart 6y ago
If you're the author of lodash I'd say it's had an impressive impact. However your choice of words betrays you. How can you define neatness without taking culture and aesthetics into consideration. Lodash doesn't make possible any things that weren't possible before. It just provides a succinct notation for common use-cases with for loops. Which use-cases are common depends on your programming culture. Which library looks most fashionable at solving them isn't that much different from reading Vogue. Even comparing it to for loops is in itself biased, because there are other cultures that are able to do looping without looping at all, like how John McCarthy favored recursive functions. Then the Common Lisp crew invented their own preferred predecessor to lodash called the LOOP macro. I'd bet Urbit does something even crazier.
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  > * Lodash doesn't make possible any things that weren't possible before.* That applies to literally all libraries. If it's written in the same language, it cannot do anything that you couldn't also do without it.
  - jart 6y ago
    You're darn right that it applies to all frameworks. However let's not forget about system libraries, which do in fact limit what's possible with your universal turing machine. That has more to do with politics than culture.
- jhardy54 6y ago
  I'm not the author of Lodash. You should take a look at the API, you'll quickly notice that it's not a for loop library: https://lodash.com/docs/#cloneDeep https://lodash.com/docs/#cloneDeep Some of these functions have been added to JavaScript and are no longer compelling, but many of these still fill voids in the language. Sure, you could write each of these yourself, but Lodash has more eyeballs (better docs, fewer bugs, better performance, etc).

onion2k 6y ago

It's culture it ain't science and it isn't a job skill. Negotiating how you build things with the rest of the team, especially when there are differing opinions about how to solve particular problems, or what programming approach to use, absolutely is a job skill. You have to contribute to that 'culture', or manage it if you're leading. It's a very important skill.