Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code” • Hacker News Board

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#61

Post by gfodor » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:19 AM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #43

gfodor wrote: post #33

There's something horribly wrong with everything about this. Why is such a smart person as Crockford wasting his time arguing about semicolons in 2012? Why is this at the top of the most popular hacker website? Why are people writing detailed opinions about semicolons in this thread (with surely more to come?) One would hope that at least over time the bike sheds being argued about would start to at least evolve into…

Whatever the next disruption is in software engineering, please dear God let it be immune-by-design to this type of distraction. While your sentiment is positive, wouldn't this mean either designing things in a rigid, unambiguous manner (think C's semicolons) or changing human nature? Ambiguous choices plus human nature equals debates. An argument about semicolons does seem silly and your proposed outcome sounds nice…

My point wasn't that arguments are avoidable altogether. It was simply that one would hope the arguments would evolve in complexity or at the very least change in specifics. Since that doesn't seem to be happening, and the same old tired topics keep coming up, I think it's important that designers of future software engineering tools consider how immune their systems are to the grab bag of arguments we've been hearing since the 1970s about syntax and semantics.

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#62

Post by dhconnelly » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #56

barrkel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jacob ("fat") comes off looking far worse than Crockford, to my eyes (and that Kit character seems to be 7 years old). It's the arrogance and stupidity of youth facing the crotchety crankiness of experience. Crockford has earned the right to have a strong opinion here IMO. But it's not just bike-shedding. It's more pernicious than that. It's actually something that looks like bike-shedding to uninformed observers, bu…

Semi-colons aside, you never earn the right to be an ass.

That's correct. Being an ass is a God-given right--you don't have to earn it.

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#63

Post by losethos » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

ASM in LoseThos is processed with Lex() so is ignored, mostly. The ASM syntax has been adapted accordingly.

At the command line, an ending ';' is converted to two ;;. The compiler fetches the token ahead so compilation lags a token.

God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\PARADISE.TXT

nflames the air; So started up in his own shape the Fiend. Back stept those two fair Angels, half amazed So sudden to behold the grisly king; Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him soon. Which of those rebel Spirits adjudged to Hell Comest thou, escaped thy prison? and, transformed, Why sat'st thou like an enemy in wait, Here watching at the head of these that sleep? Know ye not then said Satan, filled with scorn, Know ye not me? ye knew me once no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#64

Post by gfodor » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:22 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #47

gfodor wrote: post #33

There's something horribly wrong with everything about this. Why is such a smart person as Crockford wasting his time arguing about semicolons in 2012? Why is this at the top of the most popular hacker website? Why are people writing detailed opinions about semicolons in this thread (with surely more to come?) One would hope that at least over time the bike sheds being argued about would start to at least evolve into…

Why? This unfortunate behavior is well described by Wadler's Law: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law

This is great, thanks. The only logical conclusion is that engineers should be choosing tools that have the least syntactical surface area to argue over. :)

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#65

Post by ben0x539 » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:23 AM UTC

joshu wrote: post #58

magicalist wrote: post #8

if there's anything worse than crockford being a jerk, it's the self-aggrandizing asi crowd. Let's not give either any attention.

(what is an asi crowd?)

Gonna guess "asi" means "automatic semicolon insertion".

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#66

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:24 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #52

mquander wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow this argument. Putting a semicolon at the end of every statement, regardless of what follows, seems to be an even easier way to avoid making this bug.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#67

Post by maratd » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:25 AM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #24

jpeterson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole hipster movement going on right now around the idea of omitting semicolons from JavaScript code. I believe CoffeeScript is the culprit. Personally, I agree with Crockford -- it's dumb.

Meh, the real hipsters are just pushing comma-first.

They're all hipsters.

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#68

Post by groovy2shoes » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:29 AM UTC

underwater wrote: post #60

groovy2shoes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because standard-compliant JavaScript implementations don't require them (ECMAScript describes a model of "semicolon insertion" that implementors are supposed to follow).

Not required doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. If they were never needed I'd understand, but sometimes they are. I don't see the point in forcing the developer to make a conscious decision on whether to include a semicolon. Omitting semicolons also means that the correctness of a line of code is determined by the unrelated lines that follow.

While the virtues of semicolon insertion are highly debatable, developers are permitted by the ECMAScript standard to write code that relies on it. A tool like JSMin should be aware of semicolon insertion. ricardobeat put it very well elsewhere in this thread: "It is a bug on JSMin. Minifying should never alter code behaviour."

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#69

Post by drivebyacct2 » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:29 AM UTC

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #7

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #4

Crockford's stance is annoying purely because it's pedantic and because there are many libraries that embrace this style. We use django_compressor and found bugs from the compressor that uses Jsmin. So I have to use something else to compress them before hand. Are there compressors that use the syntax tree rather than transforming the source?

Is there any particular reason why you refuse to put in the semicolons in Javascript?

Like I said, there are many, many libraries that don't use them.

I used to prefer having semicolons in my javascript, then I started writing a bunch of Go. Now I wind up forgetting sometimes, though some part of me likes it, and so I continue using semicolons in my javascript.

That having been said, I think it's a matter of personal opinion (likely just what a given person is used to), and if it fits with the spec and the common usage, then you'd think a library that is expected to work with/on other libraries would try to be accommodating.

edit: To further clarify, Javascript's stance is silly, because you need to know how semicolon insertion works. It's extra knowledge you have to have. Thus, I think I agree with most here that it's easier to just use them. (Other languages have optional semicolons but they don't change the meaning of the syntax at all.)

edit2: This is GitHub, why is there not a fork already with this issue behind us?

Re: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

#70

Post by chrisguitarguy » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 5:30 AM UTC

Frankly this is less about semicolons and more about two people who both have strong opinions and feel that they need to act in a certain way.

It doesn't take a lot more effort to rephrase fat's response to be more cordial.

    "Hi @englishextra, those two lines are valid JavaScript. We try not to use semicolons whey they aren't necessary.  See (insert link to the wiki).
    
    "JSMin doesn't perform well on bits of JS like this. Maybe you can discuss it with @douglascrockford ?"

Flamewar avoided (probably) and more stuff getting done.