'Do' More with 'Run' • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Do' More with 'Run'

#31

Post by haburka » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

If I ever see this shit in code review I’m flagging it. IIFEs exist to avoid polluting global space in JS - its not something you are often dealing with in modern development. Especially the react example - make a new component, this prevents better readability like a new component or using an inline function.

Additionally for ever developer that hasn’t seen this, they have to look up the run function and try to grasp WTF it is doing. And god forbid someone modifies the run function.

Re: 'Do' More with 'Run'

#32

Post by gtsop » Sun, May 21, 2023, 12:14 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #28

Izkata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already has a name, even in the contrived example OP named it "x". The extracted function can simply be getX() or calcX() or generateX() - which verb chosen can tell the reader roughly the origin/complexity of X without having to read the function body: Does it already exist or are we creating it here? If we're creating it, is it internal or is it likely to require other resources like an API call? In a more concr…

That's true when you're assigning the result of the function to a variable, but what about the use case where you're replacing a ternary within JSX code? You could extract the evaluation to an assignment of a variable outside of the JSX, but that's the kind of unnecessary complexity that IMO is sometimes worth avoiding.

We are being quite abstract here since we are lacking real-life examples here, but using a variabe assignment intead of an inline if/else assertion does not add any complexity at all. It adds more code, yes. More complexity? No. Is it good or bad to add more code? I would answer: the more easily readable and maintainable version of the code is the better version of the code. More times than not, more code is the better version (when it is dry, with correct abstractions and good names).

Re: 'Do' More with 'Run'

#33

Post by chatmasta » Sun, May 21, 2023, 12:40 AM UTC

gtsop wrote: post #32

chatmasta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true when you're assigning the result of the function to a variable, but what about the use case where you're replacing a ternary within JSX code? You could extract the evaluation to an assignment of a variable outside of the JSX, but that's the kind of unnecessary complexity that IMO is sometimes worth avoiding.

We are being quite abstract here since we are lacking real-life examples here, but using a variabe assignment intead of an inline if/else assertion does not add any complexity at all. It adds more code, yes. More complexity? No. Is it good or bad to add more code? I would answer: the more easily readable and maintainable version of the code is the better version of the code. More times than not, more code is the bett…

If you're only consuming the variable once, and it's inside a declarative syntax like JSX, then I'd argue it's more readable to use an anonymous function, because the reader doesn't need to look elsewhere, and the function is defined in the same place where it's evaluated. And you don't need to bother thinking up a name for a variable, which could lead you to prematurely generalize.

Personally, most of the time I assign to a variable. But I do think there are cases where the IIFE is an appropriate and more elegant approach.