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Does knowing any of this make you a better programmer? I'd say no. Should you be using any of this in production code? No The next programmer even if he is a

Does knowing any of this make you a better programmer? I'd say no. Should you be using any of this in production code? No The next programmer even if he is a really good one might not know that particular esoteric trick. I'm not trying to vote down or anything, but what is the point? Most of it look like language design warts to me. Most of them should have thrown exceptions and errored out. Now I'm loving the idea of static typing a lot more.

xanderjanz 11y ago
Useful for obfuscating executable JS for security reasons.
- thomasfoster96 11y ago
  It'd have to be something that really had to be hidden, because most of these edge cases are very very slow to run.
- berbc 11y ago
  Why? I believe you have more sophisticated ways of obfuscating code. Those tricks seem to be easy to reverse.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  Security through obscurity is not security. This would be easy to translate back into the original code anyway. This is also not efficient from a file size perspective which is cancer on the web.
thomasfoster96 11y ago
Most of it is warts and is completely useless. Sometimes things like knowing that an array is an abject are pretty important if you're writing production code. The bit at the end (integer and float casting) is almost essential knowledge now for anyone writing JavaScript code that does anything mildly intensive.
Veedrac 11y ago
The problem is the strong-typing/weak-typing distinction, not the static-typing/dynamic-typing distinction. For example, Python is about as strongly typed as C++ yet they're on opposite sides wrt. how dynamic their types are.
Manishearth 11y ago
> Does knowing any of this make you a better programmer? I'd say no. Yes it does, it makes sure you never do this ;P Adding arrays sounds like something I'd totally try in JS, had I not known that it causes magic unicorn sparkles to happen)
AgentME 11y ago
Using +x to convert things to numbers and x|0 to convert things to 32-bit integers are useful and common operations.

xanderjanz 11y ago

Useful for obfuscating executable JS for security reasons.

thomasfoster96 11y ago
It'd have to be something that really had to be hidden, because most of these edge cases are very very slow to run.
berbc 11y ago
Why? I believe you have more sophisticated ways of obfuscating code. Those tricks seem to be easy to reverse.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
Security through obscurity is not security. This would be easy to translate back into the original code anyway. This is also not efficient from a file size perspective which is cancer on the web.

thomasfoster96 11y ago

Most of it is warts and is completely useless. Sometimes things like knowing that an array is an abject are pretty important if you're writing production code. The bit at the end (integer and float casting) is almost essential knowledge now for anyone writing JavaScript code that does anything mildly intensive.

Veedrac 11y ago

The problem is the strong-typing/weak-typing distinction, not the static-typing/dynamic-typing distinction. For example, Python is about as strongly typed as C++ yet they're on opposite sides wrt. how dynamic their types are.

Manishearth 11y ago

> Does knowing any of this make you a better programmer? I'd say no. Yes it does, it makes sure you never do this ;P Adding arrays sounds like something I'd totally try in JS, had I not known that it causes magic unicorn sparkles to happen)

AgentME 11y ago

Using +x to convert things to numbers and x|0 to convert things to 32-bit integers are useful and common operations.