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Left-pad as a service

left-pad.io

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Re: Left-pad as a service

#141

Post by afandian »

fyolnish wrote: post #133
afandian wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can use `asprintf` to pad a string like you can use a for loop to pad a string in JS. But it's not a dedicated named function to pad strings like the `leftpad` we're discussing. Kind of missing the point of the argument. Given how simple and popular `left-pad` module is (indicating the principle the community uses to determine granularity), I'd guess that if `String.format` was available in JavaScript t…

It's a memset followed by a strncpy, hardly worth linking to a library for. You'd be done writing the function before you finish googling for an existing one.

That's the whole point of the discussion.

Re: Left-pad as a service

#144

Post by cookiecaper »

andy_ppp wrote: post #8

Hahaha - isn't it hysterical how everyone using npm for small reusable code pieces! Aren't they morons! How stupid of people to trust their package manager to be consistent and correct and return packages they were expecting. How stupid of people to reuse small often used functions that only do one thing well. How does everyone taking the piss intend to protect themselves from this in their OS package manager, or PPM…

>It's not javascript devs fault that the standard library is so piss poor you need these short code snippets and I've definitely included small 5-10 line packages via npm or other package managers rather than roll my own because it's likely they have bug fixes I haven't considered.

Correct, it's the fault of the devs who prioritize their ego and feeling trendy over the practicalities of software design. JavaScript is not a good platform for Real Work(TM). The fact that the stdlib is tiny and such basic functions have to be imported from some random guy's library is a testament to this fact.

Personally I can't wait for the JS-everywhere fad to die out.

Re: Left-pad as a service

#146

Post by afandian »

rdancer wrote: post #138
afandian wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can use `asprintf` to pad a string like you can use a for loop to pad a string in JS. But it's not a dedicated named function to pad strings like the `leftpad` we're discussing. Kind of missing the point of the argument. Given how simple and popular `left-pad` module is (indicating the principle the community uses to determine granularity), I'd guess that if `String.format` was available in JavaScript t…

A function is dedicated if it is well-suited for a use case. It does not require it to be ill-suited for other use cases. Either you arguing that `left-pad` is not a "dedicated" function for padding by 42 characters, because it can also pad for 43 or 41, or I don't understand you at all?

The point is that it's easy to pad a string in C and easy to pad a string in JS but there's no specific function called 'padstring' in either.

The examples were really secondary to the point of my argument, which was about packaging functions into modules, not about the C language.

Re: Left-pad as a service

#147

Post by creshal »

coldtea wrote: post #135
golergka wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody makes fun of PHP.

Except people busy running businesses and creating with it.

We run almost everything on Wordpress and still make fun of PHP. And JS. And Java. And ObjC. And Ruby. And Python. Every language has its share of problems and sometimes you just have to vent.

Re: Left-pad as a service

#148

Post by Manishearth »

naasking wrote: post #117
Manishearth wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still isn't enough to refute "The reason so many people are criticizing left-pad et al is about the cost of adding a dependency.". Sure, npm may be a bad package manager. If you do have a bad package manager, there is a cost of adding a dependency, and you should consider it. That's what pdkl95's point was. Most other ecosystems, with good or bad package managers, do not have tiny one-function packages -- it's p…

> If you do have a bad package manager, there is a cost of adding a dependency, and you should consider it. That's what pdkl95's point was. That's great, and my point was that with a good package manager, that cost is effectively zero. > And the dependency cost I talk about is universal -- any package manager that allows for easy package updates is open to critical packages being broken. Automatic updates are a terri…

> my point was that with a good package manager, that cost is effectively zero.

yes, which doesn't refute pdkl95's point. If you're not in the world with a good package manager, you should consider the cost of the dependency. The Node ecosystem seems to not have done that. That's the bottom line here, if there is a cost to dependencies (which you don't seem to disagree with, at least wrt NPM), then you shouldn't have dependencies for 11-line functions. Everything else is orthogonal.

Re: Left-pad as a service

#149

Post by coldtea »

creshal wrote: post #147
coldtea wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except people busy running businesses and creating with it.

We run almost everything on Wordpress and still make fun of PHP. And JS. And Java. And ObjC. And Ruby. And Python. Every language has its share of problems and sometimes you just have to vent.

Sure, but: "we make fun of every language/every language has its share of problems, etc." is a completely different statement/message than "everybody makes fun of PHP" -- which singles it out as some huge abnormality...

Re: Left-pad as a service

#150

Post by rdancer »

fyolnish wrote: post #133
afandian wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can use `asprintf` to pad a string like you can use a for loop to pad a string in JS. But it's not a dedicated named function to pad strings like the `leftpad` we're discussing. Kind of missing the point of the argument. Given how simple and popular `left-pad` module is (indicating the principle the community uses to determine granularity), I'd guess that if `String.format` was available in JavaScript t…

It's a memset followed by a strncpy, hardly worth linking to a library for. You'd be done writing the function before you finish googling for an existing one.

I think the difference is that when a C programmer hits an undefined behaviour, they either blames the spec, the compiler, or themselves. A JavaScript programmer doesn't need a prompt to blame the spec proliferation and dilution, the necessity to write cross-platform by default, and their lack of foresight in not including a 3rd-party library that would have provided some vestiges of a targetable platform. The C code that started as a nice asprintf(3) for GNU/Linux will sprout a few if-defs once it has to run on some embedded PoS without a sane malloc().
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