JSON isn't the be all and end all data format. It's full of ambiguities and has pointless, misleading cruft like filtering "unprintable characters". Plain text is also a dead end and misconception contra UN*X hippies.
Interview with Douglas Crockford
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#52"JavaScript must die. Long live JavaScript."
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#53Im the article there is a Google Trends of JSON vs XML: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=x...
I'm curious about what caused the sudden down peak?
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#54I thought this part was rather interesting: > Evrone: You spread the idea that developers should read each other's code regularly… > Douglas: In filmmaking, there is a time in the morning called "dailies", when the previous day's footage is examined. It looks like everyone is just sitting around watching movies and wasting time, but it is critically important in finding problems early and assuring the quality of the…
A couple teams ago we did frequent pair programming and routine code reviews. We discovered both practices were very useful in some contexts, but a waste of time in others. For instance, do you really need to review each others semi-robotically-generated accessors or other simple code? Probably not (though checking such code is in line with previously established architectural guidelines is a good idea.) But there are some parts of the codebase where it is extremely useful. Figuring out which is which is sometimes more of an art than a science.
(As an aside, I think I understand a bit more about Lisp macros after contemplating this... Properly applied macros and DRYness allow you to elimiate much of your "simple" boilerplate, so you're left with beefier chunks of functionality. Like everything else, though, YMMV.)
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a academic nor hobbyist but work professionally with JavaScript for more than 10 years. I'm also "against" the constant syntactic sugar that gets added with little to no benefits, just leading to JavaScript having a large syntax. Why introduce "classes" which are just sugar on top of existing syntax? Many examples just like this, where sometimes it feels like JavaScript has changes just to have changes. Altho…
To take your argument to the extreme, why have for loops, when then are syntatic sugar over while loops? I'm generally a fan of syntatic sugar in a language if it's purpose is to simplify what's already there; but it is a balance between developer productivity and ease-of-use. I once saw javscript described as 'pithy', becuase of it's small syntatical footprint, that's probably not true so much now.
I believe Crockford said in a talk [1] that he was going to stop writing loops when tail-call elimination is supported everywhere.
Also, avoiding the for loop in JS might be a good idea because of how easy it is to shoot yourself in the foot with "for (x in stuff) ..." creating a global variable (when you accidentally leave out "var").
[1] Probably this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFTOG895C7c
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a problem with the team more with the process. If they don't care, they wont care.
> If they don't care, they wont care. We need to accommodate human nature, not change human nature to accommodate corporate requirements. Its irrational to expect a group to rally passionately around every available task. Robotic.
The good question is how to hire people that will care, and whether or not it can be incorporated into a culture.
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#57Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#58Im the article there is a Google Trends of JSON vs XML: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=x... I'm curious about what caused the sudden down peak?
JSON is much easier to parse with your eyes and there isn't much of a performance difference anymore..
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#59I am surprised he doesn’t like the more recent additions to JavaScript. I liked ES6 features quite a lot.
I've always felt there's a disconnect between two groups of people, those who use a language in their day-to-day work and those who approach it more as an object of study (i.e. academics or hobbyists). The latter view bloat as a bad thing, while it's not the biggest concern for the former (who have more pressing problems!). So for Crockford an expanding language definition is catastrophic, but for people writing web…
And those new features are usually new/different/“better” ways of doing what you could already do in the language. You can totally use JS without using any of the ES6+ syntax.
Re: Interview with Douglas Crockford
#60I am surprised he doesn’t like the more recent additions to JavaScript. I liked ES6 features quite a lot.
"The best thing we can do today to JavaScript is to retire it." I think that's a pretty interesting statement from somebody like Douglas Crockford. Not disagreeing; but still ... I think there are two ways of looking at recent changes in Javascript. Either it's progress or it's just not enough progress. I think what he is saying here is that there it has too much baggage and that there are newer and more interesting…
He has said that a good language avoids exposing the programmer to choices that they can make incorrectly. He probably sees some added features in Javascript as creating such choices.