2 ms·

You are moving goal posts. You are arguing that syntax equals mobility which is incorrect. .map and .filter can have different syntax depending on the language

You are moving goal posts. You are arguing that syntax equals mobility which is incorrect. .map and .filter can have different syntax depending on the language, just as ng-repeat (the equivalent to a for loop) has a different syntax than a for loop in Perl. Knowledge and syntax are two different things as well.

lhorie 12y ago
> You are arguing that syntax equals mobility which is incorrect No, I'm saying that the knowledge of the concepts of map and filter (as an example) is easily transferable even if syntax isn't. Once you understand those concepts, you can go look up the Ruby/Haskell/whatever syntax and you can reuse your new knowledge of higher order functions, and maybe learn about transducers, or maybe you can go look into point-free style, and the testability benefits of pure functions vs procedural style, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention that by knowing `.map`, you already know a great deal about the template languages for React, Mithril and Mercury. In contrast, say I've learned about pipe operator precedence in ng-repeat expression clauses. Now I know I can write `x in (foo = (bar | filter: baz))` to memoize a filtered list for use later in that template. But only in Angular template expressions. But not in Javascript. Or Ruby. Or Haskell. And it's a terrible idiom to use in Angular anyways because [insert long rant about a bunch of unrelated topics]. Aside from the knowledge that operators can be recursively composed into god-awful expressions, what part of all that is useful if I migrate to Ember? Or, say I learn about directives, and transclusion and the ngModel attribute micro language, and $compile and priority and the ngModelController API and ... These are most certainly not syntax-related concepts. What does learning that get me?

2 ms·

You are moving goal posts. You are arguing that syntax equals mobility which is incorrect. .map and .filter can have different syntax depending on the language

by jhall1468 12y ago

lhorie 12y ago
> You are arguing that syntax equals mobility which is incorrect No, I'm saying that the knowledge of the concepts of map and filter (as an example) is easily transferable even if syntax isn't. Once you understand those concepts, you can go look up the Ruby/Haskell/whatever syntax and you can reuse your new knowledge of higher order functions, and maybe learn about transducers, or maybe you can go look into point-free style, and the testability benefits of pure functions vs procedural style, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention that by knowing `.map`, you already know a great deal about the template languages for React, Mithril and Mercury. In contrast, say I've learned about pipe operator precedence in ng-repeat expression clauses. Now I know I can write `x in (foo = (bar | filter: baz))` to memoize a filtered list for use later in that template. But only in Angular template expressions. But not in Javascript. Or Ruby. Or Haskell. And it's a terrible idiom to use in Angular anyways because [insert long rant about a bunch of unrelated topics]. Aside from the knowledge that operators can be recursively composed into god-awful expressions, what part of all that is useful if I migrate to Ember? Or, say I learn about directives, and transclusion and the ngModel attribute micro language, and $compile and priority and the ngModelController API and ... These are most certainly not syntax-related concepts. What does learning that get me?