personally I'm super excited to see this -- have been wanting something along these lines for quite some time.
Proposal: JavaScript Structs
151–160 of 371 posts
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#152Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#153I am not sure how to really refine this thought I have had, but I have this fear that every language eventually gets so bloated and complicated that it has a huge barrier to entry. The ones that stand out the most to me are C# and Typescript. Microsoft has a large team dedicated towards improving these languages constantly and instead of exclusively focusing on making them easier to use or more performant, they are c…
> The first time I ever used C# was probably version 5? Maybe? We're on version 12 now and there's so much stuff in there that sometimes modern C# code from experts looks unreadable to me.
That's funny given many of the changes were made to make C# look more like JavaScript!
C# 6 introduced expression-bodied members for simplified syntax (like JavaScript), null-conditional operators, and string interpolation. C# 7 brought pattern matching, tuples, deconstruction, and local functions. C# 8 introduced nullable reference types for better null safety, async streams, and a more concise switch expression syntax. C# 9 to C# 12 added records, init-only properties, with expressions, and raw string literals, global using directives, top-level statements, list patterns, and primary constructors.
In C#, if you need a string list you can do:
List items = []; // Not as concise as JS but type safe.
Languages draw inspiration from each other -- taking the good parts and incorporating them in. C# is a vastly better, easier, and safer language than it used to be and so is JavaScript.
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Javascript is not simple AT ALL. It has 3 ways to declare functions, multiple variations on arrow functions syntax, a weird prototyping inheritance system, objects you can create out of "new" on functions, object literals that can act an pseudo-classes, classes, decorators, for-i loop + maps + filter + for-in loop (with hasOwn) + forEach, async / await + promises and an invisible but always-on event loop, objects pro…
Even if you think Javascript is already complicated, that isn't a reason to make it more complex .
Complexity isn't bad. If you have a simple language and you have to something complicated then you still have complexity, it's just expressed differently and uniquely in every code base.
Java doesn't have unsigned integer types because that is "simpler" but that doesn't remove the need to deal with unsigned integers in file formats and network protocols. But now you have to do a convoluted mess of code to deal with that. I'll take a complex language that solves real problems over a "simple" language any day.
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#155I am not sure how to really refine this thought I have had, but I have this fear that every language eventually gets so bloated and complicated that it has a huge barrier to entry. The ones that stand out the most to me are C# and Typescript. Microsoft has a large team dedicated towards improving these languages constantly and instead of exclusively focusing on making them easier to use or more performant, they are c…
> Now look at modern C++, it's crazy powerful but so jam packed that many people have just gone back to C.
Geez I'd sure hope not.
If you liked C++11, you can use C++11. Every compiler, platform, and library will support it.
No one erased it and made you go back to C99.
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#156𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮 They've got decorators, record tuples, shadow realms, and rich rekeying Dynamic imports, lazy modules, async contexts now displaying JSON parsing, destructure privates, string dedenters, map emplacers Symbols pointing, pipe operators, range iterators, code enhancers Eager asyncs, resource tracking, strict type checks, and error mapping Phase imports, struct layouts, buffering specs for data stacking Temporal…
10/10
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#157I am not sure how to really refine this thought I have had, but I have this fear that every language eventually gets so bloated and complicated that it has a huge barrier to entry. The ones that stand out the most to me are C# and Typescript. Microsoft has a large team dedicated towards improving these languages constantly and instead of exclusively focusing on making them easier to use or more performant, they are c…
Javascript is not simple AT ALL. It has 3 ways to declare functions, multiple variations on arrow functions syntax, a weird prototyping inheritance system, objects you can create out of "new" on functions, object literals that can act an pseudo-classes, classes, decorators, for-i loop + maps + filter + for-in loop (with hasOwn) + forEach, async / await + promises and an invisible but always-on event loop, objects pro…
Yep and TS has all of that plus a gigantic layer of bullshit on top.
The web development community has created the perfect environment for nobody to ever get any work done while still feeling like they're being productive because they're constantly learning minutiae.
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have examples of unreadable C#? The language didn’t change much IMHO. You have new features, like records, but C# code looks pretty much like what I started with in 2009
Now that I'm thinking about it, most of it is probably .NET bloat instead of C# bloat, but a few examples would be global usings, file scoped namespaces, records, target-typed new expressions, null coalesce assignments, etc. It's nothing huge, but combined with .NET bloat it can be overwhelming when you haven't worked in .NET for a while.
All the things you describe make C# more readable and easier to understand!
Are you really confused by file scoped namespaces or target-typed new or even null coalesce assignments?
You don't have to use them -- although Visual Studio will helpfully suggest places you can use them.
If I had never seen a pattern match switch statement before (and there was a point where I didn't) it's sort of immediately obvious what it does.
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#159The general idea of types with a fixed layout seems great, but I'm a lot more dubious about the idea of unsafe blocks. The web is supposed to be a sandbox where we run untrusted code and with pretty good certainty expect that it can't crash the computer. Allowing untrusted code to specify "hey let me do stuff that can cause data races if not done correctly" is just asking for trouble, and also exploits. If shared str…
It's not unsafe as in "memory segmentation fault" unsafe.
It's unsafe as in, if you don't follow the rules, the resulting value is ~rand().
For those familiar with C/C++ terminology, this is the tame "unspecified behavior" (not the nasal demon "undefined behavior.")
Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Javascript is not simple AT ALL. It has 3 ways to declare functions, multiple variations on arrow functions syntax, a weird prototyping inheritance system, objects you can create out of "new" on functions, object literals that can act an pseudo-classes, classes, decorators, for-i loop + maps + filter + for-in loop (with hasOwn) + forEach, async / await + promises and an invisible but always-on event loop, objects pro…
Yep and TS has all of that plus a gigantic layer of bullshit on top. The web development community has created the perfect environment for nobody to ever get any work done while still feeling like they're being productive because they're constantly learning minutiae.
Typescript is the best thing to happen to JavaScript since ES6