Interesting article but I for one genuinely prefer libraries to syntactic language changes. We do not need another language among the thousands already there.
On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
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Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I certainly agree with the "man up" sentiment. That's my complaint about GWT and Pyjamas. But jquery and YUI and prototype all add these OOP features in different ways. Objective-j is still javascript. It's not compiled, it's just uniquely funny-looking. (Note: there are advantages to a single-language stack, and compilation is not the end of the world.) As it happens, the javascript language is incredibly flexible a…
to me jquery feels less heavy-handed about the abstraction. every abstraction has a price, i tend to avoid them unless they have a demonstrated value. to me, OO has no demonstrated value to be honest, i see the basis of objective-j born from some notion that apple does things right so naturally we all want to do things they way they do...but objective c sucks (having coded in it), and i have no idea why people would…
"to be honest, i see the basis of objective-j born from some notion that apple does things right"
The word "apple" DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE ARTICLE. (I just checked.) Please, read the article and reply to the very thoughtful points made there. Ascribing some vague, unsubstantiated motives to people who have carefully laid out their entire reasoning behind their decision does not reflect well on your ability to engage in substantive discussion.
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also the issue that implementing things like method_missing and import are prohibitively difficult without new syntax. Objective-J's code importer is one of the more complex pieces (as it manages to do so completely asynchronously). All the approaches that use a simple JavaScript function to grab code, like grab_and_eval("file.js") are forced to happen synchronously (since you have to guarantee that the code…
And again, since Objective-J is a proper superset of JavaScript really? what can it do that js can't do?
Read his first sentence again:
"There is also the issue that implementing things like method_missing and import are prohibitively difficult without new syntax."
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also the issue that implementing things like method_missing and import are prohibitively difficult without new syntax. Objective-J's code importer is one of the more complex pieces (as it manages to do so completely asynchronously). All the approaches that use a simple JavaScript function to grab code, like grab_and_eval("file.js") are forced to happen synchronously (since you have to guarantee that the code…
And again, since Objective-J is a proper superset of JavaScript really? what can it do that js can't do?
Being a superset of JavaScript doesn't mean it can do more, it just means that all valid JavaScript is valid Objective-J.
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#15The author is against language features implemented as a library. However, the drawbacks he points to are really a lack of community programming conventions. If there were an agreed on standard Javascript way to do things like traditional OO class based inheritance, then there wouldn't be the problems he cites. Having such conventions encoded as syntax would reduce some of the power of Javascript. The fact that you c…
"The author is against language features implemented as a library."
I don't understand how you can say that, when the entire article is a defense of why they added a bunch of features to Javascript as a library. That is, as opposed to adding those features as part of a new language specification.
I think the actual argument is "as long as you are adding language features as a library, you might as well introduce new syntax for them while you're at it." They present several arguments in defense of this claim.
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also the issue that implementing things like method_missing and import are prohibitively difficult without new syntax. Objective-J's code importer is one of the more complex pieces (as it manages to do so completely asynchronously). All the approaches that use a simple JavaScript function to grab code, like grab_and_eval("file.js") are forced to happen synchronously (since you have to guarantee that the code…
And again, since Objective-J is a proper superset of JavaScript really? what can it do that js can't do?
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Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#17Interesting article but I for one genuinely prefer libraries to syntactic language changes. We do not need another language among the thousands already there.
"Interesting article but I for one genuinely prefer libraries to syntactic language changes."
I feel like there is some terminology confusion here (I already replied to someone else in the same vein).
I think it makes more sense to say "I prefer libraries that do not introduce syntactic language changes to ones that do." Technically, I would say Objective-J is a Javascript library, in addition to being a language in and of itself.
I think that Prototype, jQuery, etc. also add some syntactic changes, so I would say the difference is one of degree, not of kind.
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Separately, Objective-C is a great language, and plenty of people love it so much so that its almost impossible to find it being put to use outside of places apple forces it. and before you say "gnustep"...no one uses that Can you give me three reasons why you don't like it? 1. goofy/eyes-bleed syntax 2. i don't care about OO 3. i'll think of something later Finally, claiming OO programming is dead is nonsensical. Ja…
"1. goofy/eyes-bleed syntax" This is almost always an indication that a programming language critic has nothing really thoughtful to say. Same with Lisp and S-expressions. If I may paraphrase: "It's slightly different than what I'm used to, therefor I despise it."
I agree, the middle part is weak, but the bookends are compelling arguments.
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#19This is very well thought out, and their reasoning was surprising to me. I knew the whole point about Objective-C choosing its syntax to allow it to be a compatible superset of C, but never applied the same reasoning to Objective-J and Javascript.
Having said that, I still maintain some skepticism about using a single language for the entire webapp stack. I understand their desire, for example, to be able to swap out the "rendering layer" in the future. However, CSS is a pretty good language for specifying how things should look across an entire web site, or part of a website, or single page, etc. I don't think Objective-J is a better tool for this particular job. Likewise there may be times when you just want to express structural relationships, and HTML might be better than Objective-J for that purpose (less sure about this one).
I don't know the details about Objective-J. Maybe they address this point elsewhere. The counter argument may be that Objective-J is for "rich web applications," and you don't worry so much about site-wide CSS style in that case.
Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
#20Interesting article but I for one genuinely prefer libraries to syntactic language changes. We do not need another language among the thousands already there.
"Interesting article but I for one genuinely prefer libraries to syntactic language changes." I feel like there is some terminology confusion here (I already replied to someone else in the same vein). I think it makes more sense to say "I prefer libraries that do not introduce syntactic language changes to ones that do." Technically, I would say Objective-J is a Javascript library, in addition to being a language in…
At that point, we are venturing into LISP territory where the line between mini-language and library is truly thin (and sometimes non-existant like in the CL loop macro).
My standard: Can a common JS interpreter (say firefox) execute the code without modifications?
If that is true, then said "thing" is a library.