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NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

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Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#881

Post by nikki93 »

pjlegato wrote: post #874
nikki93 wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it actually doesn't matter. No one needs to be a certain way. Cool things will be done by people that can and will do those cool things. In the end the prescriptivity of this whole space is only ascribed by people internal to the whole system: externally nothing is 'supposed' to be done. This is just a symptom of more people programming. The thing that will speak the loudest is actions and results. If p…

This "that's just like, your opinion, man" attitude may be fine if you have no worldly goal affinity and are planning on spending the rest of your days in a remote mountain monastery. If you don't care about achieving any particular goal, then yes, all possible attitudes are equivalent. But that sort of handwavey quietism is not actually relevant to almost all people's situations. If you do have specific short term g…

This makes sense. But I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I think goal-motivation is different from goal-attachment. Being attached to "I will do my best to make x happen" rather than x itself focuses on actions and growth (within realm of control) than consequences (often outside of realm of control). Like a product failing because people are just not into it.

I think we can avoid those mistakes but what I see here is people telling other people what to do in a way that sounds unconditional: "x is better regardless of your situation." Some techs are better for x, other for y. Merging someone else's experience tree into your own is good, but it must be contextualized by their perspective--they're working on mobile embedded soft vs. you are on web, maybe, for instance. Or games vs. databasey things. Or their job is a performance engr but you are UI...

Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#882

Post by richmarr »

userbinator wrote: post #658
richmarr wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the nitpick, but "hyperabstraction"? left-pad isn't even slightly abstract.

It's not. The hyperabstraction is in how even tiny functions like this, isPositive, isArray, etc. are being abstracted and turned into individual modules.

Again, maybe I'm nitpicking, but turning something into modules doesn't seem like abstraction... you could call it encapsulation, or modularisation, or maybe extraction.

But abstraction? I don't see how that word is connected to what's happening. Maybe you can explain it.

Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#883

Post by fieryeagle »

nailer wrote: post #868
fieryeagle wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would give those candidates the FizzBuzz problem just to see if they can actually code from scratch or `require('fizz-buzz-solver');`. I care more about their competence than what 1 or 10-liner packages they maintain. On the contrary, I would certainly mark "maintains moderately popular open source project" as a calculated career move, just like how prostitutes would dress up right for the cliente. Sorry for the cr…

I'd hire the people who use fizz-buzz-solver and spends time doing original work rather than rewriting something for the sake of ego.

Here's where expectation should be set for both candidates and interviewers. The point of solving Fizz Buzz problems is to open up angles for discussion. What would you do differently with this problem, at this scale, for this integration etc etc. If someone writes crude code, I'd ask if they follow style guides or conventions. If someone writes overly fancy and clever stuff, I'd ask if they ever have to maintain shit. There is not much value in talking if all candidates would write "import fizz-buzz-solver from 'fizz-buzz-solver';".

You see, the whole Fizz Buzz is nothing more than a prop to allow me to find out what this candidate can actually do. Anyone can include a package and critical thinking differentiate smart ones from the pack. Heh, if there is a package for any and everything, most devs would be flipping burgers instead of doing original work.

Believe me, most problems you think of as original, aren't original. It's not about solving problems either, it's about repacking the solutions into something to sell, or making it popular enough so you can make money off it.

Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#884

Post by lolidaisuki »

tedmiston wrote: post #856
gizmo385 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"DRY is the most obvious one, but one that may be less obvious is for better testing." Isn't that why we just write functions? Turning simple functions into entire modules just adds an unnecessary level of abstraction that helps nobody.

Of course that's why we write functions. But we can't share a function with others and across projects... so we make it into a module to do that. It's like (micro)crowdsourcing (the smallest components of) the standard library that JavaScript never had. Some bit of logic could go from being DRY in one project, to DRY in all of my projects, ... to eventually be DRY in all projects. It's globally DRY.

>Of course that's why we write functions. But we can't share a function with others and across projects... so we make it into a module to do that.

Sounds an awful lot like a library.

Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#885

Post by lolidaisuki »

nathancahill wrote: post #84
raverbashing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no Left padding is (almost in all languages) built-in, even C can do it with printf (edited) The problem is not having a library that offers that, but having this micro-module thing as a whole NPM module . No other language does that. If it was inside a string helpers, that's great. But don't make me one single module for just left-padding (or is-integer-number)

I think there's two points related to that: 1) JS is unique in that it is delivered over the wire, so there is a benefit in having micro-modules instead of a bigger "string helpers" module. Things like webpack are changing that now (you can require lodash, and use only lodash.padStart). 2) JS's "standard" library is so small, because it's the intersection of all of the browser implementations of JS dating as far back…

> 1) JS is unique in that it is delivered over the wire

Oh, that's unique? What are these magical languages where code is solely delivered via sneakernet or snailmail?

Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#886

Post by bbcbasic »

EvanPlaice wrote: post #867
bbcbasic wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is more that the compiler* can't detect these mistakes but in other languages you can. E.g. in Haskell you only allow Null on types when you want it (you do this by using the Maybe type). Objects where you probe for values that could be undefined or could be defined but null doesn't exist as a concept but if you badly wanted it you could use a dictionary. In Haskell if you use Maybe and you process a Maybe o…

Maybe/Nothing is a perfect example of the null object pattern. Either provide a sane default or a typed instance with empty values rather than checking for null/undefined. Ie the 'null object' in 'null object pattern' doesn't mean using null to indicate the absence of a value. Null isn't used in JS to mark undefined variables, that's what 'undefined' is for. Unlike static/OOP languages, null is specifically reserved…

Purity won't cure the world of all it's ills but it may fix a bug or two before it hits ... well the developers consciousness let alone production.

I am genuinely interested in your point about trampolines and can you give an example? In Haskell foldl' for example allows you to process a big finite list quite efficiently without trampolines but yes the name of the function is a bit sucky I admit.

It's funny how you can criticize trampolines but then imperative code like this:

    var sum = 0;
    for( var i = 0; i
Is a tramp in disguise!

Re: NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

#887

Post by sebringj »

jlg23 wrote: post #109
sebringj wrote: post #34

This is a non-issue and taking focus away from the real issue. The issue is the security hole that NPM opens up when a namespace can be grabbed up by anyone if the original developer pulls out.

The OP is deliberately talking about a completely different issue that just happened to be spawned from the recent drama. He is talking about learning to code vs asking google for implementations of even the most trivial things and about what a useful library is.

I know I wasn't interested in doing any JavaScript until they started modularizing it and npm was that on crack. Possibly once the kids had their shiny new npm, some went mad with power and took it too far. Take the good with the bad though as the JavaScript language is known for.
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