What if we'd had better HTML-in-JS syntax all along?

Post by gregjor » Mon, May 11, 2020, 8:46 PM UTC

ferzul wrote: post #88

gregjor wrote: post #21

We'd have PHP in the browser.

if php had a html-in-php syntax, that might be true. but as anyone who has ever worked with php and jsx knows, this isn't true

Post by goatlover » Mon, May 11, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

kroltan wrote: post #58

kroltan wrote: post #50

This reminds me of a very cool property of the Lua language that allows for very neat "syntax extensions", and reminds of functional languages too: If you have two expressions adjacent to eachother, it evaluates to calling the left-hand side with the right-hand side as a parameter. At its simplest: function foo(text) print("Foo:", text) end foo "bar" But you could implement a JSX-lite in it: function Div(props) retur…

In fact, since objects and arrays are one and the same in Lua, one can even do away with the nested calls, which also simplifies things visually: Div { id = "outer", Div {id = "innerA"}, Div { id = "innerB", Div {} } } This works because when you omit the key (id=) of a table item in Lua, it is assumed to have a incrementing numeric key.

Post by masswerk » Mon, May 11, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #87

masswerk wrote: post #20

> I have a theory that a grave mistake was made in 1995 - the decision not to have a neat, succinct and declarative way of representing html elements in javascript. It may be interesting to recall that initially the only way to output HTML was by `document.write()` using strings (which was pretty declarative). The genuine way of generating HTML in JS were various methods of `String.prototype` for generating HTML form…

> It may be interesting to recall that initially the only way to output HTML was by `document.write()` using strings (which was pretty declarative). I think people also forget how slow a lot of JS was really until V8. I remember having server code generate JS arrays (creating them from an xhr request was too slow), that in turn would document.write (manipulating the DOM was also super slow) data on the client to make…

Post by sergeykish » Mon, May 11, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

masswerk wrote: post #40

masswerk wrote: post #20

> I have a theory that a grave mistake was made in 1995 - the decision not to have a neat, succinct and declarative way of representing html elements in javascript. It may be interesting to recall that initially the only way to output HTML was by `document.write()` using strings (which was pretty declarative). The genuine way of generating HTML in JS were various methods of `String.prototype` for generating HTML form…

So, if initially there were no Array nor Object constructors (there were arrays and objects, but only prepopulated ones, representing anchors, forms, etc, found in the document), how were arrays done in a script? function MyArray() { this.length = 0; } function arrayPush( value ) { return this[this.length++] = value; } function arrayPop() { return this[--this.length]; } MyArray.prototype.push = arrayPush; MyArray.pro…

    o = new Object
    o.foo = 'bar'
    a = new Array
    a[0] = 'baz'

    function hello() { return this.name }
    function Person(name) {
      this.name = name
      this.hello = hello
    }
    new Person('James')

    var length = 0
    a[length++] = 'foo'
    a[length++] = 'bar'

    new Object + new Array
    //null is not a number

    parseInt("foo")
    //0

Post by lhorie » Mon, May 11, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

holtalanm wrote: post #89

wilsonfiifi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also take a look at mithril.js implementation of hyperscript [0] [0] https://github.com/MithrilJS/mithril.js/blob/next/render/hyperscript.js

was about to mention Mithril. solid framework, but not great for large applications.