6 ms·

I was exactly thinking this when I was halfway reading the article. "Why not just add a property as comment?"

by generateui 14y ago

Yarnage 14y ago
Article? It's only 5 short sentences and the idea to add it as a property is the first comment on the post.
- generateui 14y ago
  Article, blogpost, same thing. The first sentence is > I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I do not read something on the lines of "you can also use a comment as a property". I wonder how you read that in the first sentence?
  - kcbanner 14y ago
    He said first comment, not first sentence.
  - Yarnage 14y ago
    >> I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. >I do not read something on the lines of "you can also use a comment as a property". I wonder how you read that in the first sentence? lol, please re-read my comment. I said the first COMMENT, not sentence, had the same suggestion. :)
tolmasky 14y ago
There are many good reasons not to add documentation as properties. For starters, it is a very US-centric approach to things. I would probably be annoyed if I was using a foreign language library that had random strings which contained text I did not understand in my objects. Secondly, the second you start putting documentation in your JSON, be prepared for services to break if you ever change that documentation. It may be silly to do "if (json._doc_.indexOf...)", but stranger things have happened and if you are making an API it is generally a bad tactic to require your clients not to be silly. "But I intend to have it in there solely because I can't use real comments -- I don't plan on shipping these". OK then probably no problem -- but at this point they're really no better than normal comments (with respect to the issue that Crockford brings up) since theres no reason you can't put compiler directives in the "comment" properties: { /* do something special mr. proprietary compiler */ "compiled_property": "magic" } vs. { "//" : "do something special mr. proprietary compiler" "compiled_property": "magic" } So the possibility of diverging incompatible implementations remains -- however I think the real reason this didn't happen wasn't the lack of comments but rather that JSON's biggest selling point is almost universal compatibility.
- malandrew 14y ago
  It's not US-centric. It's English-centric and English is the lingua franca of software engineering as it is with many other professions. TBH, programming is and will always will be English centric and I would never feel 100% confident with any software engineer that isn't very proficient in English insofar as reading and writing are concerned. Practically every tome, text, blog or article of any real value in the field is published in English, and only once they are really well known are they translated to other languages. The only time the English speaking programming World is behind that of another language is when a new language is developed by a non-native English speaker (such as Lua developed in Brazil and Ruby developed in Japan). And even then no language would ever see popular adoption to the point of importance if it doesn't adopt English as the language of its source and its documentation. This isn't bigotry. This is just the way things are. FWIW, English isn't my first language, Portuguese is, but I have native fluency in English.
  - burgerbrain 14y ago
    To add to this, I suspect any non-English speaker would rather have English comments that they can at least throw at Google Translate, than no comments at all.
  - nknight 14y ago
    From my work with Taiwanese engineers, I have found that reading and writing are as much two different skills as speaking and listening are. Almost all of them can read English remarkably well, but some of the emails I get from them... Often grammar and syntax are nowhere to be found, and the vocabulary is occasionally amusing (a couple of the memorable gems have been "USB sticker", presumably thinking of "USB stick" (and still ambiguous in the context of the message, what they were talking about was a USB WiFi dongle), and "redeploy" referring to a reboot or power cycle).
  - jballanc 14y ago
    > This isn't bigotry. This is just the way things are. Indeed, I don't think this situation is all that different from Medicine or Biology. Parts of anatomy, diseases, and taxonomic classifications will forever be known by their Latin names. Likewise, programmers will probably still be referring to "if" statements and "for" loops long after no English speakers remain.

I was exactly thinking this when I was halfway reading the article. "Why not just add a property as comment?"

Yarnage 14y ago

Article? It's only 5 short sentences and the idea to add it as a property is the first comment on the post.

generateui 14y ago
Article, blogpost, same thing. The first sentence is > I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I do not read something on the lines of "you can also use a comment as a property". I wonder how you read that in the first sentence?
- kcbanner 14y ago
  He said first comment, not first sentence.
- Yarnage 14y ago
  >> I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. >I do not read something on the lines of "you can also use a comment as a property". I wonder how you read that in the first sentence? lol, please re-read my comment. I said the first COMMENT, not sentence, had the same suggestion. :)

tolmasky 14y ago

There are many good reasons not to add documentation as properties. For starters, it is a very US-centric approach to things. I would probably be annoyed if I was using a foreign language library that had random strings which contained text I did not understand in my objects. Secondly, the second you start putting documentation in your JSON, be prepared for services to break if you ever change that documentation. It may be silly to do "if (json._doc_.indexOf...)", but stranger things have happened and if you are making an API it is generally a bad tactic to require your clients not to be silly. "But I intend to have it in there solely because I can't use real comments -- I don't plan on shipping these". OK then probably no problem -- but at this point they're really no better than normal comments (with respect to the issue that Crockford brings up) since theres no reason you can't put compiler directives in the "comment" properties: { /* do something special mr. proprietary compiler */ "compiled_property": "magic" } vs. { "//" : "do something special mr. proprietary compiler" "compiled_property": "magic" } So the possibility of diverging incompatible implementations remains -- however I think the real reason this didn't happen wasn't the lack of comments but rather that JSON's biggest selling point is almost universal compatibility.

malandrew 14y ago
It's not US-centric. It's English-centric and English is the lingua franca of software engineering as it is with many other professions. TBH, programming is and will always will be English centric and I would never feel 100% confident with any software engineer that isn't very proficient in English insofar as reading and writing are concerned. Practically every tome, text, blog or article of any real value in the field is published in English, and only once they are really well known are they translated to other languages. The only time the English speaking programming World is behind that of another language is when a new language is developed by a non-native English speaker (such as Lua developed in Brazil and Ruby developed in Japan). And even then no language would ever see popular adoption to the point of importance if it doesn't adopt English as the language of its source and its documentation. This isn't bigotry. This is just the way things are. FWIW, English isn't my first language, Portuguese is, but I have native fluency in English.
- burgerbrain 14y ago
  To add to this, I suspect any non-English speaker would rather have English comments that they can at least throw at Google Translate, than no comments at all.
- nknight 14y ago
  From my work with Taiwanese engineers, I have found that reading and writing are as much two different skills as speaking and listening are. Almost all of them can read English remarkably well, but some of the emails I get from them... Often grammar and syntax are nowhere to be found, and the vocabulary is occasionally amusing (a couple of the memorable gems have been "USB sticker", presumably thinking of "USB stick" (and still ambiguous in the context of the message, what they were talking about was a USB WiFi dongle), and "redeploy" referring to a reboot or power cycle).
- jballanc 14y ago
  > This isn't bigotry. This is just the way things are. Indeed, I don't think this situation is all that different from Medicine or Biology. Parts of anatomy, diseases, and taxonomic classifications will forever be known by their Latin names. Likewise, programmers will probably still be referring to "if" statements and "for" loops long after no English speakers remain.