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This makes me nervous. In general, I think adding features like this to a mature language is a misstep because it increases the cognitive load of "things you h

This makes me nervous. In general, I think adding features like this to a mature language is a misstep because it increases the cognitive load of "things you have to know to read other people's code." And that's strictly increases... Since changes like this can't remove previous approaches (for backwards compatibility reasons), we'll now have three syntaxes for function calls? Yuck. Left unchecked, this predilection eventually leaves you with languages like C++: a language where you can write good, safe code if you stick to modern methods, but good luck learning what "modern methods" are or finding tutorial books that don't teach you any of the bad-old approaches or, most importantly, working with other people's C++ code that still has `setjjmp` and `longjmp` in it because the language allows for it, therefore someone used it somewhere. (oblig: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/)

yamtaddle 4y ago
I'm starting to think the entire direction of modern Javascript is one giant yak-shave built on enabling bad decisions. "I like functional programming so I'm going to do that in JavaScript" -> "Now I have a problem because JavaScript is not very good at that, so now let's radically alter JavaScript until it's... well, still not good at it, but it looks like it is, at a glance" (initially through libraries, now altering the language itself) "Let's make as many calls async by default as possible" -> "Oh but actually I need most of them to seem synchronous, even if they're actually async, like 90+% of the time" -> "Callbacks?" -> "Oh god that sucked... promises?" -> "Better but still not great, let's just... uh... add `async` and `await` and watch as their use becomes so hilariously common that it's now painfully obvious that the default behavior is wrong?"
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > watch as their use becomes so hilariously common that it's now painfully obvious that the default behavior is wrong Hm. :) Hindsight being 20/20, perhaps "synchronous" was a bad default for a language embedded in an application space where the lifeblood is "network communications over unreliable channels." Still, seemed a good idea at the time(1) (1) ... at the time, they were doing a cute tech demo, there were alternative scripting languages under consideration, and I don't think anyone expected JavaScript to blow up to become the only viable option.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I'm starting to think the entire direction of modern Javascript is one giant yak-shave built on enabling bad decisions. "I like functional programming so I'm going to do that in JavaScript" -> "Now I have a problem because JavaScript is not very good at that, so now let's radically alter JavaScript until it's... well, still not good at it, but it looks like it is, at a glance" (initially through libraries, now altering the language itself) "Let's make as many calls async by default as possible" -> "Oh but actually I need most of them to seem synchronous, even if they're actually async, like 90+% of the time" -> "Callbacks?" -> "Oh god that sucked... promises?" -> "Better but still not great, let's just... uh... add `async` and `await` and watch as their use becomes so hilariously common that it's now painfully obvious that the default behavior is wrong?"

shadowgovt 4y ago
> watch as their use becomes so hilariously common that it's now painfully obvious that the default behavior is wrong Hm. :) Hindsight being 20/20, perhaps "synchronous" was a bad default for a language embedded in an application space where the lifeblood is "network communications over unreliable channels." Still, seemed a good idea at the time(1) (1) ... at the time, they were doing a cute tech demo, there were alternative scripting languages under consideration, and I don't think anyone expected JavaScript to blow up to become the only viable option.