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A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

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Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#141

Post by thatthatis »

stiff wrote: post #137
thatthatis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 30 line javascript spreadsheet is similar for me to when I first saw Norvig's 21 line python spelling corrector ( http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html ): this language is more powerful and expressive than I thought. I'm increasingly believing that HTML/CSS/JS in a browser is a viable common runtime. This demo does quite a lot to solidify that belief.

The only things that are powerful and expressive in JavaScript are bastardized beyond recognition versions of ideas from Lisp, Smalltalk and Self. You get those dynamic mechanisms that we know for 50 years now (lambda expressions and runtime method dispatch, oh wow) to be useful but without learning any lessons learned in those 50 years about how to design a coherent language based on those concepts, you just get a h…

All valid points. With the norvig example, the longer I look at it the more I like python. With this js example, the more I look at it the more I like python.

Sadly, I can't really run python in the browser.

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#142

Post by draegtun »

Here are some links to Carl Sassenrath World's smallest spreadsheet program he wrote back in 2001 using Rebol (under 100 lines):

* Announcement on Rebol mailing list - http://www.rebol.org/ml-display-thread.r?m=rmlNHPK

* Code (Rebol script library) - http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=rebocalc.r

* Code (in Gist for nicer syntax highlighting) - https://gist.github.com/draegtun/7454495

* Recent blog post with screen image - http://rebol2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-worlds-smallest-spr...

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#143

Post by icoder »

racbart wrote: post #41

This is truly great as proof of concept and also as a reminder that in software development building 80% of perceived* functionality usually takes only tiny fraction of total development time which is required to build final product. * - this app looks and feels like “almost complete spreadsheet” yet it provides much less than 1% features of even a basic spreadsheet.

Also, I wonder how much of this code would survive if you want to get beyond this 1%. Probably nothing, which makes this a road with a dead end. This doesn't mean it is not a useful and brilliant demonstration of cool language features (hacks?), which is how I see it. But there's no relationship between this amount of work/code/lines for this percentage and the amount of work/code/lines for any reasonably higher percentage of spreadsheet functionality.

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#144

Post by lelandbatey »

stiff wrote: post #137
thatthatis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 30 line javascript spreadsheet is similar for me to when I first saw Norvig's 21 line python spelling corrector ( http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html ): this language is more powerful and expressive than I thought. I'm increasingly believing that HTML/CSS/JS in a browser is a viable common runtime. This demo does quite a lot to solidify that belief.

The only things that are powerful and expressive in JavaScript are bastardized beyond recognition versions of ideas from Lisp, Smalltalk and Self. You get those dynamic mechanisms that we know for 50 years now (lambda expressions and runtime method dispatch, oh wow) to be useful but without learning any lessons learned in those 50 years about how to design a coherent language based on those concepts, you just get a h…

I agree, saying "Wow, this is a viable and useful language" because you can do something in just a few highly unreadable lines seems... like a pretty odd judgment.

It'd be a bit like saying that C is a great language because someone wrote a raytracer that fits on a business card[0] using it.

[0] http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#145

Post by ondras »

inDigiNeous wrote: post #139
timje1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I was confused as to how the fellow got around the basics of having to parse tokens until I noticed with (DATA) now that's just genius. I hate writing token parsing.

Using both 'with' and 'eval' on the same line, nice ;) Douglas Crockford said in his excellent talk 'JavaScript: The Good Parts' that he highly recommends js -developers to avoid 'with', as it doesn't work correctly and for 'eval' he has to say 'If you are finding yourself using eval, you really are thinking about things the wrong way'. Source, starts where he is speaking about with and eval: http://youtu.be/hQVTIJBZ…

Somewhat. It is generally not recommended to take things dogmatically; even a potentially dangerous and frowned-upon techniques might be suitable in certain scenarios.

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#146

Post by dnautics »

jcheng wrote: post #136
richthegeek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'm using something very like this in a Node project I'm working on. However, with(context) has some pretty nasty side effects that I just couldn't sidestep, so I used the "contextify" module. If you're needing with and have access to npm, use contextify, It'll save you a lot of effort!

Do you mind elaborating on those nasty side effects? (I use with(context) for a small but important feature in the product I work on.)

if it's on node.js I imagine there's things to worry about like malicious injection

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#147

Post by ben336 »

inDigiNeous wrote: post #139
timje1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I was confused as to how the fellow got around the basics of having to parse tokens until I noticed with (DATA) now that's just genius. I hate writing token parsing.

Using both 'with' and 'eval' on the same line, nice ;) Douglas Crockford said in his excellent talk 'JavaScript: The Good Parts' that he highly recommends js -developers to avoid 'with', as it doesn't work correctly and for 'eval' he has to say 'If you are finding yourself using eval, you really are thinking about things the wrong way'. Source, starts where he is speaking about with and eval: http://youtu.be/hQVTIJBZ…

Yes. They're generally performance and reading nightmares. But this is a very clever usage.

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#148

Post by ondras »

dakridge wrote: post #134

Just curious - shouldn't the events be attached to the parent table and delegated to the children inputs so you are not attaching the focus and blur events to each individual input? Similar to something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/W3Stf/

That is a cool improvement. The "focus" and "blur" events do not bubble, so I initially tried to evade event delegation - with respect to legacy event handling (attachEvent) that does not support the capture phase you used.

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#149

Post by ondras »

dakridge wrote: post #134

Just curious - shouldn't the events be attached to the parent table and delegated to the children inputs so you are not attaching the focus and blur events to each individual input? Similar to something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/W3Stf/

(but as you see, I soon switched to onevent-only approach, naturally)

Re: A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

#150

Post by genericacct »

araskoktas wrote: post #131
genericacct wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you heard of the HttpOnly attribute for cookies?

good, send HttpOnly cookies and solve that problem. window.location.href=' http://www.redt*be.com '; -- if you think evaluating JS code, as-is passed by the client is a good idea go ahead.

I most definitely will. and if my users want to browse your favorite porn site i don't see why i shouldn't let them..
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