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Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

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Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#121

Post by BrendanEich »

mattbriggs wrote: post #117
BrendanEich wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, "optional" means you can skip it, period, full stop. False advertising plus module patterns plus concatenation equals big enough trouble for people to be outraged about the false advertising. Better to tell the truth, from the title down. If you are using your brain fully, perhaps you can avoid firing the footgun. Is this the best use of your brain? I am not so sure.

How about this, I never lead a line with an infix operator, ever, and every other language I use does not require semicolons. Why would it be a bad thing to just pay attention to lines leading with (? Because js is the exception, it actually takes more brain power for me to remember it on every line then when I am leading with (, especially without a compiler complaining at me. Would you admit that at least for me it…

Of course. I wrote "YMMV" and "I am not so sure" -- those explicitly expressed my doubts about the wisdom of absolutism on either "side" (there are several sides, actually).

NPM fans can use the NPM style well, I've seen it. Whether it scales to the masses remains to be demonstrated, but that may be true of any coherent style.

JS is used by many hackers who do not know all of its rules. It seems to work, mostly (an amazing feat, no?), but I have heard eyewitness testimony from people burned by statements starting with ( that ended up preceded by an unterminated statement, and the kingdom was lost for want of a ;.

Under maintenance, edits tend to make Murphy an optimist. I suspect the NPM crew selects for the best and gets the best. How that would hold up at scale with regression to the hacker mean is an open question in my mind.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#122

Post by ricardobeat »

alanh wrote: post #111
ricardobeat wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIY the main claim is that it's a more reliable way to write js: programmer mistakes/missing semi-colons are more easily noticed, and much less common, since the rules are simpler. It's there in every debate about this.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know what “FIY” means, what your point is, or how your comment is a reply to mine. Consider re-phrasing?

I misspelled FYI - "for your information". You said there are only downsides, and no advantages; I just told you what the claimed advantage is for "abusing" ASI.

I hope you're not just being snarky.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#123

Post by chad_walters »

web_chops wrote: post #81
cletus wrote: post #33

Heh, I was waiting for this post. Coming in the next 24 hours: - "Why I use minimal semi-colons in Javascript" - "ASI is broken but I like it" Honestly I'm shocked at the defense of this practice (of ASI "abusage"). It speaks loudly to Jacob's (fat@githib) ranking of ego-stroking and showboating over creating readable code, particularly for a library "Designed for everyone, everywhere" [1]. I'm confounded that such a…

That is what surprised me a lot. That there would be so much defense of the practice. I work on C/C++ for a living in enterprise environment and there are style rules followed diligently. Every one knows that there can be lot of cool/hipster code written with C/C++ but no one does because of the maintenance concerns. Writing code is much easier than maintaining it.

What are the universally accepted style rules for C/C++? Every organization I have worked in has had to develop their own guidelines around style in C/C++.

What really surprises me is that such a large number of people are quick to attack someone for writing legal code simply because they disagree with the style used. It feels awfully close to attacking someone for using a different bracing style from your preferred bracing style.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#125

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

BrendanEich wrote: post #121
mattbriggs wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this, I never lead a line with an infix operator, ever, and every other language I use does not require semicolons. Why would it be a bad thing to just pay attention to lines leading with (? Because js is the exception, it actually takes more brain power for me to remember it on every line then when I am leading with (, especially without a compiler complaining at me. Would you admit that at least for me it…

Of course. I wrote "YMMV" and "I am not so sure" -- those explicitly expressed my doubts about the wisdom of absolutism on either "side" (there are several sides, actually). NPM fans can use the NPM style well, I've seen it. Whether it scales to the masses remains to be demonstrated, but that may be true of any coherent style. JS is used by many hackers who do not know all of its rules. It seems to work, mostly (an a…

As the founding member of the npm crew, I'd like to provide some history.

I started using this style originally because I -- not new to JavaScript, and adhering to the "semicolons everywhere" style -- was bitten twice in rapid succession; first by a leading [ causing a function to receive "undefined" as an argument (instead of two arrays), and then again by a leading ( resulting in a non-function being called. Both were unnecessarily difficult to debug, because my brain couldn't see the error. (Even when JSLint complained, I thought it was lying. ,] looks a lot like ], at first glance, and is valid JS. Maybe I'm a little dyslexic or something.)

So, I thought, "New rule: Commas first, prefix ( and [ with semicolons." Problem solved.

But ending a line with a semicolon seemed kind of silly when I was then prefixing with a semicolon the next line, even though I'd learned that it was absolutely necessary for any kind of "safety" (even as an expert, even as a semicolon user). So, I thought, if I'm doing this silly prefixing thing to make ASI safe, why not just let it be safe, and drop them everywhere?

So I did. And it's pretty nice.

I don't understand why people get so upset about how I write programs, especially those that they don't even use or contribute to. The first time a professional JavaScripter cursed me out at the top of his lungs in a bar, literally spitting in my face while he screamed at me, I realized that there was some essential human weirdness involved here, and it became much too interesting to drop. Every time I ask people to please not lie about JavaScript to newcomers, they accuse me of being dogmatic or a semicolon hater.

But I maintain the JavaScript in Node.js as well, which follows Google's (occasionally insane) C++-inspired semicolon-ridden JavaScript style, and I'm fine with that. It's kind of nice, too, in a different way. More dots. Vim's auto-indenter works a little better.

What's wrong with just not lying? I don't get it at all. People who already know C and Java are usually veteran enough to grok weird language warts. People from Python and Ruby have an easier time learning the exceptions than sticking to the rule, since their habits are usually to omit the ceremonial EOL punctuation. And newcomers don't have any preconceptions anyway; they're busy learning why we call "this" a string, and why this is always something different, and crazy shit like "a function is an object and you construct an instance of it with new which calls it on a this that inherits from its prototype". (I mean, seriously, read that sentence to a nonprogrammer, and ask them what it means. It's gibberish!)

But people react to it like I've insulted them personally, when I just ask that they not fill newcomers' heads with lies and fud. I still don't understand it.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#126

Post by chad_walters »

It looks like the right thing might have happened here (at least in the small).

Crockford is making a change in JSMin: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSMin/commit/5ca277ea452...

Jacob changed the code to be compatible with existing JSMin: https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/3057#issuecommen...

There, now don't we all feel better?

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#127

Post by cmkrnl »

brown9-2 wrote: post #108
nhebb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GitHub style guide recommends the opposite: "Do your best to never use a semicolon. This means avoiding them at line breaks and avoiding multi-statement lines. For more info, read Mislav's blog post [2]." FWIW, I agree with the Google style guide. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but ASI struck me as a fail-safe to protect coders that forgot the occasional semicolon and was later mis-identified as a feature. Havi…

I find it odd that they (Github) don't really bother to justify their stance on this. The guide just says "don't use them", not why they find it in their interest to do so. It'd be interesting to get a better understanding of why they think this. Personally I don't see the point in omitting something that leads to known problems instead of including it and encountering zero problems.

Aren't the GitHub team members rather youthful, in general? Skilled, yes, and also opinionated and outspoken. Things might change as they get older and settle into a more balanced lifestyle.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#128

Post by prodigal_erik »

pbreit wrote: post #87

I suppose it's too late for Fat to do the right thing and insert the semi-colon since he's ridiculed anyone making such a request?

> edit: The code had already been changed to an if when i suggested the jsmin issue be filed as a bug.

They worked around the bug some time before Crockford refused to fix it.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#129

Post by dave1010uk »

gcb wrote: post #84
dave1010uk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some reasons: \n can easily get turned into \r\n Whitespace is harder to see when debugging (especially with word wrap) Convention

You're not supposed to touch your minified js after you generated it

And most people won't. Using semicolons means things are less likely to break when other people use your code.

Re: Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon

#130

Post by magicalist »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #125
BrendanEich wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I wrote "YMMV" and "I am not so sure" -- those explicitly expressed my doubts about the wisdom of absolutism on either "side" (there are several sides, actually). NPM fans can use the NPM style well, I've seen it. Whether it scales to the masses remains to be demonstrated, but that may be true of any coherent style. JS is used by many hackers who do not know all of its rules. It seems to work, mostly (an a…

As the founding member of the npm crew, I'd like to provide some history. I started using this style originally because I -- not new to JavaScript, and adhering to the "semicolons everywhere" style -- was bitten twice in rapid succession; first by a leading [ causing a function to receive "undefined" as an argument (instead of two arrays), and then again by a leading ( resulting in a non-function being called. Both w…

I'm having trouble imagining your examples. The first one sounds like you did something like

  fn([1,2,]
      [3,4])
(but presumably longer) and a comma first would fix that (though so would believing jshint or using a debugger :), but a leading semicolon obviously couldn't be used there. I can't picture the second problem, though, at least not in a way that a trailing semicolon wouldn't have fixed.

On the topic of interaction with other developers, this:

> I don't understand why people get so upset about how I write programs

is unfortunate and is probably the biggest problem in this thread (and the previous one). At this point, I've accepted that some people like comma and semicolon first, and if that's the style of a project I'm contributing to, I'll say "this is really dumb" to myself and then write it in that style anyway. It's correct Javascript, and I think plenty of projects are stupidly designed, or inscrutably written, but at some point you suck it up or go elsewhere. It's just a style.

However, there are some red flags in your post that you should think about if you're interested in some dialogue. This is based just on this one post, and I don't think we've ever actually met, so I don't want to go too far here, but statements like

> I realized that there was some essential human weirdness involved here, and it became much too interesting to drop

> Every time I ask people to please not lie about JavaScript to newcomers

> What's wrong with just not lying? I don't get it at all.

> I just ask that they not fill newcomers' heads with lies and fud. I still don't understand it.

sound like pretty classic trolling for the response you're getting. I'm a firm believer in being precise when explaining topics (especially to newcomers), but there's a difference between trying to correct people that are saying incorrect things and trying to provoke a reaction out of them.

(To his credit, Crockford is actually good about saying "this is valid javascript, but it's a developer anti-pattern" and then explaining why he thinks so. I just disagree with about 25% of his anti-patterns and, of course, he's usually kind of a jerk about them)

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