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Ruby now has “punning.” > Values in Hash literals and keyword arguments can be omitted. [Feature #14579] > {x:, y:} is a syntax sugar of {x: x, y: y}. > foo(

Ruby now has “punning.” > Values in Hash literals and keyword arguments can be omitted. [Feature #14579] > {x:, y:} is a syntax sugar of {x: x, y: y}. > foo(x:, y:) is a syntax sugar of foo(x: x, y: y). This is going to be controversial and take some getting used to, but I think eventually everyone will love it. It’s not an easy syntax to learn - I remember when this came to JS it took a while to get my head around all the different ways this shorthand was used in the wild. It’s hard to come up with new syntax that can peacefully coexist with the established language. I think in hindsight it would have been helpful for Ruby if it had done something like square braces instead of brackets for hash literals, or not allowed brackets for blocks. The most ambiguous syntax all involves hash literals vs blocks… this adds to that cognitive load. But typing out a long hash literal just to capture a bunch of local variables or methods is so common, and the duplication is quite annoying, so on the whole I’m glad this was added and am sure I’ll use it a lot :)

codesnik 5y ago
"everyone wants the colon" / Larry Wall. perfect example.
codesnik 5y ago
I wonder, will there be a breaking change for older syntax, where it was previously foo x: [1,2,3] Or maybe that "punning" will work only inside of () and {}?
- jaynetics 5y ago
  Of course cases where parentheses are omitted will keep working like before, changing this would silently affect huge amounts of code. See also https://zverok.github.io/blog/2021-12-08-value-omission-debug.html https://zverok.github.io/blog/2021-12-08-value-omission-debu...
sodapopcan 5y ago
I'll throw myself out there to say that after being forced to read punning in JS for the past 2+ years, I've never come around to it. Sure it's quicker (and I'll admit even nicer) to write, but even after seeing it daily for so long, I still find myself doing double-takes on what I'm looking at, and I need as little as possible of that while reading code. I'm a little disappointed that Ruby introduced it but no one is forcing me to use it so to each their own (and I'm not writing Ruby or much JS professionally anymore so it doesn't affect me too much).
treis 5y ago
>This is going to be controversial and take some getting used to, but I think eventually everyone will love it It's saving a single character in your example. I can see liking it as solving a minor inconvenience. But love? I don't see that. To me it's just another thing to learn.
- nocman 5y ago
  Maybe so, for some, but I find: {width:, height:, x_pos:, y_pos:} to be much more pleasant than {width: width, height: height, x_pos: x_pos, y_pos: y_pos} And the more items you add the more I find it useful. Yeah, it took some getting used to in Javascript after years and years without it, but I personally would not want to go back to not having it. I'm not crazy about the colon/comma combo, but if I was writing in Ruby I suspect I'd get used to it after a while.
ljm 5y ago
The curly braces in Ruby do an awful lot of work (blocks, procs, lambdas, hashes, interpolation) and I wonder if part of it is because it helped bring Smalltalk and Lisp-related concepts to people who were mostly familiar with C-style languages. Arguably it was the right call considering where Ruby is now.
zarzavat 5y ago
This feature has such a positive effect on code quality in JS. It makes it easier to give consistent names to variables, and harder to use inconsistent names. You really notice when you write { foo: bar } instead of { foo } and it becomes somewhat of a code smell. Could variable bar be changed to foo? If yes then great, that's one less naming variation you have to remember for 'foo'. Across a whole codebase that can be a significant improvement.
- winrid 5y ago
  This is because every variable is a piece of abstraction, and this shows you unessisary abstractions! I love it.
- justbaker 5y ago
  I like how it prevents unnecessary repetition. “An object with foo stored in key foo” { foo: foo } vs “an object containing foo” { foo }
mpd 5y ago
My question is whether or not rubocop can autocorrect it to whatever. If so, I really dgaf about this.
dopeboy 5y ago
I've always wondered what this feature was called and never knew how to Google for it. TIL - thank you.

codesnik 5y ago

"everyone wants the colon" / Larry Wall. perfect example.

codesnik 5y ago

I wonder, will there be a breaking change for older syntax, where it was previously foo x: [1,2,3] Or maybe that "punning" will work only inside of () and {}?

jaynetics 5y ago
Of course cases where parentheses are omitted will keep working like before, changing this would silently affect huge amounts of code. See also https://zverok.github.io/blog/2021-12-08-value-omission-debug.html https://zverok.github.io/blog/2021-12-08-value-omission-debu...

sodapopcan 5y ago

I'll throw myself out there to say that after being forced to read punning in JS for the past 2+ years, I've never come around to it. Sure it's quicker (and I'll admit even nicer) to write, but even after seeing it daily for so long, I still find myself doing double-takes on what I'm looking at, and I need as little as possible of that while reading code. I'm a little disappointed that Ruby introduced it but no one is forcing me to use it so to each their own (and I'm not writing Ruby or much JS professionally anymore so it doesn't affect me too much).

treis 5y ago

>This is going to be controversial and take some getting used to, but I think eventually everyone will love it It's saving a single character in your example. I can see liking it as solving a minor inconvenience. But love? I don't see that. To me it's just another thing to learn.

nocman 5y ago
Maybe so, for some, but I find: {width:, height:, x_pos:, y_pos:} to be much more pleasant than {width: width, height: height, x_pos: x_pos, y_pos: y_pos} And the more items you add the more I find it useful. Yeah, it took some getting used to in Javascript after years and years without it, but I personally would not want to go back to not having it. I'm not crazy about the colon/comma combo, but if I was writing in Ruby I suspect I'd get used to it after a while.

ljm 5y ago

The curly braces in Ruby do an awful lot of work (blocks, procs, lambdas, hashes, interpolation) and I wonder if part of it is because it helped bring Smalltalk and Lisp-related concepts to people who were mostly familiar with C-style languages. Arguably it was the right call considering where Ruby is now.

zarzavat 5y ago

This feature has such a positive effect on code quality in JS. It makes it easier to give consistent names to variables, and harder to use inconsistent names. You really notice when you write { foo: bar } instead of { foo } and it becomes somewhat of a code smell. Could variable bar be changed to foo? If yes then great, that's one less naming variation you have to remember for 'foo'. Across a whole codebase that can be a significant improvement.

winrid 5y ago
This is because every variable is a piece of abstraction, and this shows you unessisary abstractions! I love it.
justbaker 5y ago
I like how it prevents unnecessary repetition. “An object with foo stored in key foo” { foo: foo } vs “an object containing foo” { foo }

mpd 5y ago

My question is whether or not rubocop can autocorrect it to whatever. If so, I really dgaf about this.

dopeboy 5y ago

I've always wondered what this feature was called and never knew how to Google for it. TIL - thank you.