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The GitHub style guide recommends the opposite: "Do your best to never use a semicolon. This means avoiding them at line breaks and avoiding multi-statement li

by nhebb 15y ago

The GitHub style guide recommends the opposite: "Do your best to never use a semicolon. This means avoiding them at line breaks and avoiding multi-statement lines. For more info, read Mislav's blog post [2]." FWIW, I agree with the Google style guide. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but ASI struck me as a fail-safe to protect coders that forgot the occasional semicolon and was later mis-identified as a feature. Having Brendan Eich weigh in on this is akin to having Thomas Jefferson pop his head into the Ninth Circuit and clarify an issue over Constitutional intent. If it were me, I'd listen to Thomas Jefferson. [1] https://github.com/styleguide/javascript https://github.com/styleguide/javascript [2] http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2010/05/semicolons/ http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2010/05/semicolons/

tzs 15y ago
That blog post they cite includes this: My advice on JSLint: don’t use it. Why would you use it? If you believed that it helps you have less bugs in your code, here’s a newsflash; only people can detect and solve software bugs, not tools. So instead of tools, get more people to look at your code. Unless I'm missing something, that easily qualifies as the dumbest thing I've read on the net in the last week--and I've been to /r/politics.
- maw 15y ago
  You're not missing anything. It's dumb. JSLint doesn't find all the bugs in my code, but it does find quite a few. There are several places where I deliberately ignore its recommendations, but all in all I take what it says seriously. I'm sure you do likewise.
brown9-2 15y ago
I find it odd that they (Github) don't really bother to justify their stance on this. The guide just says "don't use them", not why they find it in their interest to do so. It'd be interesting to get a better understanding of why they think this. Personally I don't see the point in omitting something that leads to known problems instead of including it and encountering zero problems.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- cmkrnl 15y ago
  Aren't the GitHub team members rather youthful, in general? Skilled, yes, and also opinionated and outspoken. Things might change as they get older and settle into a more balanced lifestyle.
BrendanEich 15y ago
[2] has an inaccurate title. Semicolons are not optional, as is made clear by [2]'s final section that recommends putting ; before ( where ( starts a statement. Nothing optional in that case! As I noted in my blog, it's not just (, either. ( is by far the likeliest source of trouble, but / + - [ all can serve as infix operators or prefix operators or (in the case of /) lexical delimiters. Which is easier to remember, the rules in [2] plus the full "when you must use a semicolon because it is not optional" rule? Or the rules that people who know C, C++ and Java follow? YMMV, but it's no slam dunk, and going "light" on semi-colons risks disastrous bugs. Going heavy tires out readers a bit with chicken-scratching but carries little risk of adding bugs (the worst case is if(C);T -- oops, and empty statement linting helps). As usual with programming, there is no substitute for thinking and practicing, learning from the bottom up, and avoiding bad religion.
- benatkin 15y ago
  That's the exception to the rule. As long as the exception really is exceptional, it's OK to state the rule in the title.
  - BrendanEich 15y ago
    No, "optional" means you can skip it, period, full stop. False advertising plus module patterns plus concatenation equals big enough trouble for people to be outraged about the false advertising. Better to tell the truth, from the title down. If you are using your brain fully, perhaps you can avoid firing the footgun. Is this the best use of your brain? I am not so sure.
    - mattbriggs 15y ago
      How about this, I never lead a line with an infix operator, ever, and every other language I use does not require semicolons. Why would it be a bad thing to just pay attention to lines leading with (? Because js is the exception, it actually takes more brain power for me to remember it on every line then when I am leading with (, especially without a compiler complaining at me. Would you admit that at least for me its a YMMV type of thing?
bengillies 15y ago
FWIW the GitHub JavaScript style guide also recommends that you don't write JavaScript _at all_, unless you can't help it.

by nhebb 15y ago

tzs 15y ago

That blog post they cite includes this: My advice on JSLint: don’t use it. Why would you use it? If you believed that it helps you have less bugs in your code, here’s a newsflash; only people can detect and solve software bugs, not tools. So instead of tools, get more people to look at your code. Unless I'm missing something, that easily qualifies as the dumbest thing I've read on the net in the last week--and I've been to /r/politics.

maw 15y ago
You're not missing anything. It's dumb. JSLint doesn't find all the bugs in my code, but it does find quite a few. There are several places where I deliberately ignore its recommendations, but all in all I take what it says seriously. I'm sure you do likewise.

brown9-2 15y ago

I find it odd that they (Github) don't really bother to justify their stance on this. The guide just says "don't use them", not why they find it in their interest to do so. It'd be interesting to get a better understanding of why they think this. Personally I don't see the point in omitting something that leads to known problems instead of including it and encountering zero problems.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
cmkrnl 15y ago
Aren't the GitHub team members rather youthful, in general? Skilled, yes, and also opinionated and outspoken. Things might change as they get older and settle into a more balanced lifestyle.

BrendanEich 15y ago

[2] has an inaccurate title. Semicolons are not optional, as is made clear by [2]'s final section that recommends putting ; before ( where ( starts a statement. Nothing optional in that case! As I noted in my blog, it's not just (, either. ( is by far the likeliest source of trouble, but / + - [ all can serve as infix operators or prefix operators or (in the case of /) lexical delimiters. Which is easier to remember, the rules in [2] plus the full "when you must use a semicolon because it is not optional" rule? Or the rules that people who know C, C++ and Java follow? YMMV, but it's no slam dunk, and going "light" on semi-colons risks disastrous bugs. Going heavy tires out readers a bit with chicken-scratching but carries little risk of adding bugs (the worst case is if(C);T -- oops, and empty statement linting helps). As usual with programming, there is no substitute for thinking and practicing, learning from the bottom up, and avoiding bad religion.

benatkin 15y ago
That's the exception to the rule. As long as the exception really is exceptional, it's OK to state the rule in the title.
- BrendanEich 15y ago
  No, "optional" means you can skip it, period, full stop. False advertising plus module patterns plus concatenation equals big enough trouble for people to be outraged about the false advertising. Better to tell the truth, from the title down. If you are using your brain fully, perhaps you can avoid firing the footgun. Is this the best use of your brain? I am not so sure.
  - mattbriggs 15y ago
    How about this, I never lead a line with an infix operator, ever, and every other language I use does not require semicolons. Why would it be a bad thing to just pay attention to lines leading with (? Because js is the exception, it actually takes more brain power for me to remember it on every line then when I am leading with (, especially without a compiler complaining at me. Would you admit that at least for me its a YMMV type of thing?

bengillies 15y ago

FWIW the GitHub JavaScript style guide also recommends that you don't write JavaScript _at all_, unless you can't help it.