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my feeling was that Crockford’s ‘…good parts’ was intensely pragmatic. About as far away from the academic approach you’re describing as i can imagine. A bigger

by tomgp 4y ago

my feeling was that Crockford’s ‘…good parts’ was intensely pragmatic. About as far away from the academic approach you’re describing as i can imagine. A bigger, multi paradigm language makes it harder to read other peoples code as the chances are higher that they’re employing a different paradigm or alter a different idiom, a clear maintenance burden.

saiojd 4y ago
Pragmistism literally means utility for problem solving. Who do you know solves problems using a Crockford-style subset of language features? Note that, no where did I argue that bloat is good. I only said that it was tolerable given that some new features are useful. Maintenance burden is a real problem, but is still tolerated in practice. I don't agree that subsetting a language is far from an academic approach. In fact this is what pretty much every PLT class does in order to make reasoning about language definitions easier.
- tomgp 4y ago
  Identifying that subset of the language was paradigm shift in JS development. around 2008 when the good parts came out i don’t know any serious JS developers who didn’t take on board many of its lessons. examples: avoiding ‘this’, understanding the value of functions as first class citizens, understanding closures. these weren’t unique to crockford but by presenting them in an accesible plain spoken way he moved the state of the language forward. i do agree that there’s a need to weigh the value of new features vs bloat but id say 1 good feature in ten is pretty poor odds. another example of crockfords pragmatism is JSON which for all its flaws has been a real boon. edit: un-auto correcting “crockpot” :D
  - saiojd 4y ago
    Interesting points, thank you! JSON is a great example, I understand what you meant now. That being said, I really wish JSON had comments :P

by tomgp 4y ago

saiojd 4y ago

Pragmistism literally means utility for problem solving. Who do you know solves problems using a Crockford-style subset of language features? Note that, no where did I argue that bloat is good. I only said that it was tolerable given that some new features are useful. Maintenance burden is a real problem, but is still tolerated in practice. I don't agree that subsetting a language is far from an academic approach. In fact this is what pretty much every PLT class does in order to make reasoning about language definitions easier.

tomgp 4y ago
Identifying that subset of the language was paradigm shift in JS development. around 2008 when the good parts came out i don’t know any serious JS developers who didn’t take on board many of its lessons. examples: avoiding ‘this’, understanding the value of functions as first class citizens, understanding closures. these weren’t unique to crockford but by presenting them in an accesible plain spoken way he moved the state of the language forward. i do agree that there’s a need to weigh the value of new features vs bloat but id say 1 good feature in ten is pretty poor odds. another example of crockfords pragmatism is JSON which for all its flaws has been a real boon. edit: un-auto correcting “crockpot” :D
- saiojd 4y ago
  Interesting points, thank you! JSON is a great example, I understand what you meant now. That being said, I really wish JSON had comments :P