3 ms·

Are you the author? The whole article just seems to be missing the point entirely. It pretty much answers everything with "oh but you can write a hack to work

by nbevans 13y ago

Are you the author? The whole article just seems to be missing the point entirely. It pretty much answers everything with "oh but you can write a hack to work around that" or "oh there is some library you can use that plugs that gap". Whilst yes, these may be viable "solutions" for hacking something out. It doesn't refute the claim by the original article that JS is a bad language. It actually just reinforces it with yet more examples. The only positives to take away from the article are where it highlights features coming in ES6 to actually solve some of the problems. But these admissions seem to contradict the premise of the article.

timruffles 13y ago
Yes. No I'm not missing the point: I show how, within a few lines, these 'missing features' disappear. e.g: constants, type annotations, objects as keys. Adding a whole language feature to save a few lines of code - not to my taste. You don't need a new language feature to express an idea if it can be trivially expressed in the language as it stands.
- nbevans 13y ago
  I didn't like the constants solution for nulls. Why not use a Maybe monad? I'm surprised that you didn't considering your claimed language experience. I guess I just don't agree with your fundamental position on this. That writing yet more code to workaround a bad language is in anyway a long-term solution. At some point you'll want to bring more devs onto your team and then you'll need to explain all this technical debt and hacks to them. Not good. I still believe you're missing the point of the original article you were refuting. It's not about being able to workaround something. It's about not needing to workaround flaws in the language in the first place. That's what defines a good language. Further reading for you (unordered): 1. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-all.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/the-best-code-is-no... 2. "The line of code you don’t write is the line of code you never have to debug." -- Steve Jobs 3. Mythical Man Month (a book)
  - timruffles 13y ago
    Maybe monad - like this one I wrote? http://truffles.me.uk/playing-with-es6-generators-to-make-a-maybe-in-javascript http://truffles.me.uk/playing-with-es6-generators-to-make-a-.... FYI - I'm sure you're not trying to be, but you're coming off as terribly condescending... Yes: we disagree. I write 3 lines where others see a need for new language features.

by nbevans 13y ago

timruffles 13y ago

Yes. No I'm not missing the point: I show how, within a few lines, these 'missing features' disappear. e.g: constants, type annotations, objects as keys. Adding a whole language feature to save a few lines of code - not to my taste. You don't need a new language feature to express an idea if it can be trivially expressed in the language as it stands.

nbevans 13y ago
I didn't like the constants solution for nulls. Why not use a Maybe monad? I'm surprised that you didn't considering your claimed language experience. I guess I just don't agree with your fundamental position on this. That writing yet more code to workaround a bad language is in anyway a long-term solution. At some point you'll want to bring more devs onto your team and then you'll need to explain all this technical debt and hacks to them. Not good. I still believe you're missing the point of the original article you were refuting. It's not about being able to workaround something. It's about not needing to workaround flaws in the language in the first place. That's what defines a good language. Further reading for you (unordered): 1. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-all.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/the-best-code-is-no... 2. "The line of code you don’t write is the line of code you never have to debug." -- Steve Jobs 3. Mythical Man Month (a book)
- timruffles 13y ago
  Maybe monad - like this one I wrote? http://truffles.me.uk/playing-with-es6-generators-to-make-a-maybe-in-javascript http://truffles.me.uk/playing-with-es6-generators-to-make-a-.... FYI - I'm sure you're not trying to be, but you're coming off as terribly condescending... Yes: we disagree. I write 3 lines where others see a need for new language features.