Introducing Closure Tools • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#21

Post by bokchoi » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 9:03 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #18

rbarr wrote: post #2

What an unfortunate name. Perhaps, in the confusion, it will help to actually promote Rich Hickey's wonderful work.

"Clozure" is taken as well. http://www.clozure.com/clozurecl.html Any other consonants that can be shoe-horned into that slot?

Clo-de-jour?

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#22

Post by seiji » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 9:09 PM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #17

Would anyone who already knows this tool, or is taking the time to learn it, care to explain what they mean by "compiles web apps down into compact, high-performance JavaScript"? I assume this is a JS-to-JS translator. How exactly are they transforming the JS? I mean, of course, besides the obvious things they mention: minification, removing dead code, and some error checking.

Take a look here: http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api-tutorial3.h...

When you turn on advanced mode they do automatic inlining, variable substitution, and they don't respect the globalness of anything unless you specifically force something to be global.

YUI Compressor assumes anything not in a function is global, so it won't rename top level objects. Closure in advanced mode will trample through your globals and property names like rhinos mating in a field of daises.

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#23

Post by Confusion » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 9:14 PM UTC

rbarr wrote: post #2

What an unfortunate name. Perhaps, in the confusion, it will help to actually promote Rich Hickey's wonderful work.

I think most of the intended audience will not find 'Closure' confusing, because they are unaware of the concept that already has that name.

The overlap of people interested in Clojure and people interested in Closure is rather small.

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#24

Post by slig » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 9:22 PM UTC

It took me a while to figure this out, but there's a lot more than "just" a js compiler. Since nobody here commented about it, I guess I'm not the only one that didn't see it.

We can now use all the google fancy widgets (from gmail, gdocs, etc). Check this: http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog...

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#25

Post by xal » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 9:38 PM UTC

I think there is way to much attention on the compiler. It's neat but not that big of a deal. The key here is that they released their widget library. Tons of great stuff with very high code quality. This also includes the document editor from google docs which is by leaps and bounds the best engineered WYSIWYG editor out there.

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#26

Post by leif » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 10:00 PM UTC

Wow, I have been seriously missing this outside google-land. So happy it's released; it's a fantastic set of tools, even if you only use the compiler as a glorified lint.

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#27

Post by harto » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 10:01 PM UTC

DannoHung wrote: post #13

justinhj wrote: post #11

So now there is Clozure common lisp, Clojure for the JVM, and now Closure. I was already getting the first two mixed up.

I am never going to be able to refer to an actual closure again and have anyone understand what I'm talking about, am I?

I already find that hard enough - I've found that people tend to conflate first-class functions with closures.

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#28

Post by Sandman » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 10:06 PM UTC

rbarr wrote: post #2

What an unfortunate name. Perhaps, in the confusion, it will help to actually promote Rich Hickey's wonderful work.

This is indeed an unfortunate name. The word 'closure' was, at first, used to describe a concept in programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_(computer_science). Then Clozure and Clojure came along. Now, I can see how these two are related to the aforementioned concept, but I simply can't see what these 'Closure tools' have to do with the concept of closures. Yet the name would suggest that they do. Is there anybody from Google that would care to explain?

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#29

Post by fortes » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 10:13 PM UTC

leif wrote: post #26

Wow, I have been seriously missing this outside google-land. So happy it's released; it's a fantastic set of tools, even if you only use the compiler as a glorified lint.

Given your experience with the tool, any tips or best practices?

I already use lint in my build system, this looks like a good companion as well.

Re: Introducing Closure Tools

#30

Post by gojomo » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 10:15 PM UTC

frognibble wrote: post #4

rbarr wrote: post #2

What an unfortunate name. Perhaps, in the confusion, it will help to actually promote Rich Hickey's wonderful work.

It was called Closure before Rich announced Clojure to the world.

Even without the near-collision with 'Clojure', the full-collision with the 'closure' concept is problematic. They should prepend or append a 'G' or 'JS' for clarity (to both humans and indexers). EG:

GClosure, JSClosure, ClosureG, or ClosureJS