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Standard Coffeescript (in my experience). edit: hah, just saw who i replied to. double edit: the renderer hierarchy he created is yet another good example of

Standard Coffeescript (in my experience). edit: hah, just saw who i replied to. double edit: the renderer hierarchy he created is yet another good example of why I believe coffeescript needs interfaces...

jashkenas 15y ago
> the renderer hierarchy he created is yet another good example > of why I believe coffeescript needs interfaces... What exactly are you thinking of here? Because JS is as flexible as you can be in terms of duck-typing and calling any function with any number of arguments -- I don't see what having an explicit "interface" construct would gain you.
- functionform 15y ago
  Compiler safety for the design. Implement a base class, and force implementation for sub classes. I know that CS philosophically is about keeping JS's openness, but I feel it would be a time saving convenience if the compiler told me I was missing a method.
  - jashkenas 15y ago
    Ah yes -- this would be very against the open/dynamic spirit of CS and JS -- and for that reason, we'd never add it. Many valid uses of subtypes don't need to implement every method defined by a parent type (or interface) in order to be used correctly. For example, a rich "collection" interface that has some helper functions for key:value hash-like collections, but that a more array- or set-like subtype doesn't have to implement. If you forget to implement a method that you later try to use, you'll find out when you try to use it. Such is the nature of the beast.
  - munificent 15y ago
    If you want a language that compiles to JS and has more compile-time checking, I'd encourage you to check out Dart. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you don't mind semicolons and curly braces, it gives you a pretty decent amount of compile time checking while still generating nice JS.
  - insin 15y ago
    You could use Closure Compiler for that instead: https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/js-for-compiler#tag-interface https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/js-for-c...

jashkenas 15y ago

> the renderer hierarchy he created is yet another good example > of why I believe coffeescript needs interfaces... What exactly are you thinking of here? Because JS is as flexible as you can be in terms of duck-typing and calling any function with any number of arguments -- I don't see what having an explicit "interface" construct would gain you.

functionform 15y ago
Compiler safety for the design. Implement a base class, and force implementation for sub classes. I know that CS philosophically is about keeping JS's openness, but I feel it would be a time saving convenience if the compiler told me I was missing a method.
- jashkenas 15y ago
  Ah yes -- this would be very against the open/dynamic spirit of CS and JS -- and for that reason, we'd never add it. Many valid uses of subtypes don't need to implement every method defined by a parent type (or interface) in order to be used correctly. For example, a rich "collection" interface that has some helper functions for key:value hash-like collections, but that a more array- or set-like subtype doesn't have to implement. If you forget to implement a method that you later try to use, you'll find out when you try to use it. Such is the nature of the beast.
- munificent 15y ago
  If you want a language that compiles to JS and has more compile-time checking, I'd encourage you to check out Dart. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you don't mind semicolons and curly braces, it gives you a pretty decent amount of compile time checking while still generating nice JS.
- insin 15y ago
  You could use Closure Compiler for that instead: https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/js-for-compiler#tag-interface https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/js-for-c...