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Proposal: JavaScript Structs

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Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#171

Post by o11c »

pier25 wrote: post #52
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…

> or more performant Obviously then can't make TS more performant (since it doesn't execute) but C# is very performant and even surpasses Go in the TechEmpower benchmarks.

TS is pretty impressive in that its compiler is slower than C++ compilers though.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#172

Post by lifthrasiir »

Can see "why", but I can't really see why a new syntax is warranted. This feature is expected to be used infrequently and probably has to be defined as an ECMAScript extension only in order to put it into WebAssembly. A "fake" prototype that indicates strictness should be enough for implementations (and polyfills). There are many other issues but that is glaring enough to be pointed out.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#173

Post by terandle »

munificent wrote: post #76
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'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…

Been using .net since 2.0 and nah C# has jumped the shark. Primary constructors are a very poorly designed feature that for some reason was added in the last version.

The new-ish yearly release cycle I think is mostly to blame, they feel like they need to add some headline features every year but the team also, maybe due to org-chart politics, seems to not really able to make deep runtime level changes that are needed to actually add anything useful so they just add syntax sugar every year bloating the language.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#174

Post by ygra »

Shiny_Gyrodos wrote: post #149
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'm an absolute beginner when it comes to programming, and I chose C# as my first language to learn. I've been learning steadily for 8 or so months now and at no point have I felt the language was unapproachable due to excessive features. Looking back on what each new version added, I don't think any of the additions were damaging to the simplicity of C#. I do likely have a biased perspective though, as I use newer C…

> I do likely have a biased perspective though, as I use newer C# features every day

I think that is kind of the point, though. Many of those newer features help with simplifying code and making it less boilerplate-y. To old programmers it is a simple code fix in the IDE to move from 30 lines of variable assignments in a switch to a 5 lines switch expression and they can learn that way. People new to the language typically won't even consider going the complicated route because they learned an easier way first.

I do concede that having people with less C# experience on a team where modern C# is used, there will be constructs that are not immediately obvious. SharpLab has an “Explain” mode which would be helpful in such cases, but I haven't seen anything like that in IDEs: https://sharplab.io/#v2:C4LgpgHgDgNghgSwHYBoAmIDUAfAAgBgAJcB...

However, as a personal anecdote, we've had a number of developers who have written mostly Java 1.4 (technical reasons) before switching to C# about a year ago. They took up the newer features and syntax almost without problems. Most questions I got from them were along the lines of “Can we also use this feature?” and not “What does this do?”.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#175

Post by pjmlp »

seanw444 wrote: post #57
pjmlp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C23 has just been ratified, and C2y has already quite a few proposals. Programming languages are like any other software product, evolution or stagnation. Eventually they might implode, however whatever comes after will follow the same cycle yet again.

And branches [1] of C are still spawning and gaining traction, because C++ is perceived as overkill. [1]: https://github.com/c3lang/c3c

Spawning, yes. Gaining traction beyond a couple of blog posts in sites like HN, not really.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#176

Post by wiseowise »

usrusr wrote: post #118
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but when "the good parts" came out, half of this list was already true. There is a reason we ignore a good chunk of the language to be productive with it.

Not just half of it, the central part of it. Javascript did not grow into something huge, it started that way. A prototype based wannabe Java that accidentally (?) shipped with a full scheme included alongside. The latter of which remained mostly dormant until "the good parts" came along and put them into the (deserved) spotlight, relegating the prototype stuff from idiomatic to niche, for when you are doing somethin…

> shipped with a full scheme included alongside

Sorry, what?

https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isn...

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#178

Post by Zanfa »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #64
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…

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…

And ESM vs CJS. What should be an inconsequential transition, has turned into a minefield where adding a dependency to your package.json might blow up your build system, testing library or application without warning. Literally wasted weeks of my life debugging this pile of poop that is the JS ecosystem.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#179

Post by wiseowise »

BigJono wrote: post #161
usrusr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just half of it, the central part of it. Javascript did not grow into something huge, it started that way. A prototype based wannabe Java that accidentally (?) shipped with a full scheme included alongside. The latter of which remained mostly dormant until "the good parts" came along and put them into the (deserved) spotlight, relegating the prototype stuff from idiomatic to niche, for when you are doing somethin…

It would have worked out fine if we managed to lose the prototypes without ramming classes into the language and baiting all the Java dickheads over to the web ecosystem. Javascript breathed it's last breath the moment someone saw NestJS and said "wow that's a good idea".

> Javascript breathed it's last breath the moment someone saw NestJS and said "wow that's a good idea".

I still don’t understand how someone looked at Spring and thought “Wow, that’s pretty good! I’ll bring it to platform that has worse performance than Java, to language that was designed with dynamicity in mind and has no native static typing”.

Re: Proposal: JavaScript Structs

#180

Post by bryanrasmussen »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #64
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…

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…

>Javascript is not simple AT ALL.

I prefer languages with a small instruction set, as then you can learn all you can do in the language and hold it in your head. JavaScript used to have a small instruction set, I don't feel it does any longer.

Aside from this I don't know that I see any benefit to these structs, although perhaps that is just the article doing that whole trying to write JavaScript like Java thing that making classes and constructors enabled.

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