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Proposal: JavaScript Structs

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Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#121

Post by intothemild »

adamc wrote: post #25
leetharris wrote: post #18

I 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…

Java went through this too, although there, a lot of it is part of the ecosystem. See https://chrisdone.com/posts/tamagotchi-tooling/

The java tooling is the number one thing I hate about using the language. It's all just bad.

Then. You get forced into using intelij because it seems to smooth over a lot of the toolings problems with "magic".

It's horrible.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#122

Post by neonsunset »

leetharris wrote: post #18

I 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…

> sometimes modern C# code from experts looks unreadable to me

This is a culture issue and has always existed in C#, Java and C++ communities sadly (and I'm seeing this now with TS just as much, some Go examples are not beacons of readability either, I assume other languages suffer from this similarly).

In the past, people abused BinaryFormatter, XML-based DSLs, occasionally dynamic, Java-style factories of factories of factories, abuse of AOP, etc. Nowadays, this is supplanted by completely misplaced use of DDD, Mediatr, occasional AutoMapper use (oh god, at least use Mapperly or Mapster) and continuous spam of 3 projects and 57 file-sized back-ends for something that can be written under ~300 LOC split into two files using minimal API, records and pattern matching (with EF Core even!).

Neither is an example of good code, and the slow but steady realization that simplicity is the key makes me hopeful, but the slow pace of this, and new ways to make the job of a developer and a computer more difficult that are sometimes introduced by community and libraries surrounding .NET by MS themselves sour the impression.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#123

Post by iainmerrick »

johnfn wrote: post #104
munificent wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been meaning to write a longer essay on this for years, but I believe the reason for this observation is different cohorts. Imagine you are a C# programmer just as C# 1.0 is released. C# is a fairly simple language at that time (and similar to other languages you already know), so you can get caught up on it fairly easily and quickly. A few years later, C# 2.0 comes out. It's got a handful of features, but not t…

Something about OP didn't strike me quite right, but your explanation here really nails it, I think. Especially because I can see that I'm in quite an old JS cohort - and quite happy with the language as a result - but if I were to start coding in JS yesterday I think I would gnash my teeth and tear out my hair.

This is quite a compelling story, but thinking about it, I don’t fully agree.

There’s more than one language that I initially disliked, and only learned to like after some of (what I saw as) the glaring flaws were fixed. After they added more features!

For one, Objective-C. I didn’t like it at all until they added ARC, removing the need for manual addRef / release everywhere. After that, coming to the language pretty late, I came to like Obj-C quite a lot.

JavaScript is another one. For a long time I thought it was an awful language and avoided using it, but a few things have brought me round and now I really like it:

- modules

- async/await

- TypeScript, if you’ll allow that as a “JavaScript feature”

I even quite like JS classes, although I could live without them.

Simplicity is good, but power and expressiveness are also good.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#124

Post by afavour »

hinkley wrote: post #77
afavour wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this specific case it's JavaScript's requirement for backwards compatibility that bloats it... but there's a lot you can ignore. Like, you can declare a variable with var, let or const but there's absolutely no reason to use var any more. I feel similarly about the proposals to introduce records and tuples: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-record-tuple ... in most scenarios you'll probably be better off us…

When they made class declarations imply strict, I thought that was a pretty wise move. But it might have been good if they applied more limitations than that, made them super-strict. Such as for instance making 'var' not work in class declarations.

ES modules too would have been a great opportunity to cut out some of the outdated cruft.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#125

Post by int_19h »

thot_experiment wrote: post #34
afavour wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this specific case it's JavaScript's requirement for backwards compatibility that bloats it... but there's a lot you can ignore. Like, you can declare a variable with var, let or const but there's absolutely no reason to use var any more. I feel similarly about the proposals to introduce records and tuples: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-record-tuple ... in most scenarios you'll probably be better off us…

> but there's absolutely no reason to use var any more Naw, var has function scope and hoisting, both of which are useful.

Useful for what?

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#126

Post by int_19h »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #44
leetharris wrote: post #18

I 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…

This is why always say the true beginner programming language is C. Stupid easy to learn, have some loops, have some conditions, make some memory allocations. You will learn about the fundamentals of computing as well, which you might as well ignore (unknowingly) if you start with something like JavaScript (where is this data living in my computer?).

From that perspective, something like Pascal or Modula-2 is much better - you get all the same stuff but no footguns.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#127

Post by int_19h »

Waterluvian wrote: post #96
leetharris wrote: post #18

I 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…

I also don’t know how to refine my thought but it’s something along the lines of: The people who are in a position to decide what features get added to a language are usually top experts and are unlikely to have any reasonable perspective on how complicated is too complicated for the rest of us. If you live and breathe a language, just one more feature can seem like a small deal. I think it becomes much more reasonab…

For many languages these days, evolution happens in public, and you can look at those discussions and see how this sausage is made. If you do it for C#, if anything, the pattern is that relatively inexperienced users are the ones who propose features (to make some specific pet peeve of theirs easier), while the more experienced folk and especially the language designers who make the final call aggressively push back, point out corner cases, backwards compatibility, maintenance burden etc.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#128

Post by nsonha »

dunham wrote: post #120
afavour wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this specific case it's JavaScript's requirement for backwards compatibility that bloats it... but there's a lot you can ignore. Like, you can declare a variable with var, let or const but there's absolutely no reason to use var any more. I feel similarly about the proposals to introduce records and tuples: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-record-tuple ... in most scenarios you'll probably be better off us…

> there's absolutely no reason to use var any more. So I also thought. And then I recently learned that typescript uses `var` internally for performance. From src/compiler/checker.ts: // Why var? It avoids TDZ checks in the runtime which can be costly. // See: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/52924 /* eslint-disable no-var */ var deferredDiagnosticsCallbacks: (() => void)[] = [];

I can think of a few when hoisting is nice, stylistically:

if (...) var x = ...

else x = ...

/////

try { var x = ...}

catch (error) { x = ... }

/////

for (...) {

  var x: NodeJS.Dict = {}

  x[key] = ...
}

return x

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#129

Post by afavour »

nsonha wrote: post #128
dunham wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's absolutely no reason to use var any more. So I also thought. And then I recently learned that typescript uses `var` internally for performance. From src/compiler/checker.ts: // Why var? It avoids TDZ checks in the runtime which can be costly. // See: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/52924 /* eslint-disable no-var */ var deferredDiagnosticsCallbacks: (() => void)[] = [];

I can think of a few when hoisting is nice, stylistically: if (...) var x = ... else x = ... ///// try { var x = ...} catch (error) { x = ... } ///// for (...) { var x: NodeJS.Dict = {} x[key] = ... } return x

All of those feel like anti patterns to me. Much more difficult to read.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#130

Post by zanethomas »

I don't understand the need for the ever-growing list of "enhancements" to JS. Take Class for example.

Class is entirely unnecessary and, essentially, tries to turn JS into a class-oriented language from its core which is object-oriented.

I never create classes. I always create factory functions which, when appropriate, can accept other objects for composition.

And I don't use prototypes, because they are unnecessary as well. Thus sparing me the inconvenience, and potential issues, of using 'this'.

In my dreams those who want to turn JS into c# or Java should just create a language they like and stop piling on to JS.

But, at least so far, the core of JS has not been ruined.

That said, there are some new features I like. Promises/async/await, Map, Set, enhancements to Array being among them. But to my way of thinking they do not change the nature of the language in any way.

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