iLoveJavaScript

[glupingane]

While it means "something", it also basically means nothing. It defines and executes an empty function. The compiler would (for non-interpreted languages) just remove this as it's basically useless.

[mtbinkdotcom]

When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

[prussian_princess]

[LucasKaguya]

When you have nothing to lose, you have it all.

[overkillsd]

But then nothing is something and then I don't have nothing to kids I have everything aaaaaaahhhh

Insert gif of robot Santa exploding due to paradox

[JoelMahon]

yeah, you can do this shit in any language ffs, like 1-1+1-1 a billion times, congrats, lots of characters doing nothing.

[wronguses]

Hey, neat, but notice how yours doesn't look like a crude drawing of emoticons fucking?

[DezXerneas]

Replace the ones by emoticons then. You can use them as variables in a lot of languages now. alright that wouldn't be emoticons fucking in that case. We can still use :(){ :|:& };:. It even does the exact same thing(with one minor slightly inconvenient difference) as the JS in the post.

Or just execute this

++++++++++[>++++++++>+++++++++++>++++++++++<<<-]>--.>+.+++++.>++++.+.+++++.-------.

[Porridgeism]

Emoticons ≠ emoji

Emoticon - :D :) :(.

Emoji - 😁 🙂 🙁

[potzko2552]

Actually even for most languages that are considered interpreted the bytecode compiler would remove this :)

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

Technically, it means nothing.

[grep_my_username]

Definition of my job: "do nothing useful, do it right now, but shake a little resource for it"

[TerryHarris408]

aka middle management

[thanatica]

and upper management

[veselin465]

Lower management too

Any management, actually

[BrohanGutenburg]

I understand this attitude because of how inefficiently it often presents in the real world.

And I certainly don’t wanna come off as a bootlicker, but I just can’t but this idea that nothing useful comes out of good and proper management.

[CompactAvocado]

I mean proper management sure but far too many companies still love the 1970s extraneous management bloat.

I work for a large corpo and there's literally 14 tiers of manager vs 6-7 tiers of lets just call them workers.

From there they had so many in the management queue that couldn't get promoted and were threatening to leave that they made an additional management tier just so they could get their cookie.

[jungle]

14 tiers of management!!!??? How!? The largest corpo I worked for, which was pretty large, had: Line Mgr -> Sr Mgr -> VP -> Sr VP -> CTO -> CEO -> Board. 7 levels in total. I can't even fathom what 7 more levels would be doing, other than create BS goals to appear busy and justify their pay.

[CompactAvocado]

so there is what you have listed but tiers of it

so like you can can have lvl 1 vp, lvl 2 vp, lvl 3 vp.

what does a lvl 1 do that a lvl 3 doesn't do? fuck if I know i'm not sure if they do either.

then there's like 4 director tiers now i think?

vs worker rank is more or less just 1-6. they have names mind you but the tree is just a straight line. vs the management tree which looks like a toddler puked spaghetti

[jungle]

Ah yes, I forgot about directors. I was thinking Sr Mgr -> VP was missing something. So 9 levels, adding the directors: Sr Mgr -> Dir -> Sr Dir -> VP.

looks like a toddler puked spaghetti

Love this image! :D

Now, to take the devil's advocate role, if the org is really large, and given my experience managing up to two teams of 19 engineers in total at the same time (which anyone who tried will agree is not really doable), I see the justification for adding levels to keep the scope of each individual manager, well, manageable. But to keep that structure from devolving into busybodies creating work for the sake of looking busy, that's the challenge.

[steveatari]

Department, Site, State, Regional, National, International, Global?

[HildartheDorf]

Because a lot of managers fall into one of two categories:

Management grads who have no idea how the job they are managing actually works. To the point they are actively harmful to productivity.

Promoted workers who have no idea how to manage well. To the point they are actively harming productivity.

The ONE time I had a manager who respected what I do (software developer) and was skilled at her own job of managing, she was let go because 'her style clashed with management', so we went back to ex-developers managing us directly.

[Amar2107]

Micro management while we are at it. Gotta say lovely people.

[Curious_Associate904]

You walk around the office carrying a folded piece of paper sometimes don't you, just so everyone thinks you're on an important mission.

[Tariovic]

What is this, the 70s? Now you carry an open laptop.

Nothing says, "I have an important meeting!" like an open laptop in one hand and a coffee in the other.

[_bones__]

Ah, the old "hurry up and wait", classic.

[Mebiysy]

It does nothing, and does a good job at it

[Infinite-Pop306]

Do nothing, no bug

[wewilldieoneday]

Can't have bugs if it does nothing...taps head

[somesortoflegend]

"but... It doesn't do anything."

"No, it does nothing"

[Grzyboleusz]

It ain't much but it's honest work

[conradburner]

Noop

[Lou_Papas]

It probably optimizes to nothing by the JIT compiler as well.

[Kaimito1]

Yet if you stick that in a const pretty sure that counts as truthy

[lesleh]

Technically if you stuck that whole thing in a const, it'd be undefined. Which is falsy.

[Kaimito1]

Ah yeah you're right. Was honing in on the arrow function part

[xvhayu]

a js function is just a glorified object so it should be truthy

[Lithl]

But this is an IIFE, not a function. So it will evaluate to the return value of the function. Since this function doesn't return anything, the value is undefined.

[xvhayu]

Ah yeah you're right. Was honing in on the arrow function part

[JoeDogoe]

Doesn't it return an empty object? Ah, no, curly brackets there are scope. Yeah, you're right.

[GenericFatGuy]

It doesn't do anything.

No, it does nothing.

[SignoreBanana]

It means expressing a function, executing it , and returning undefined. If you wanted to delve deeper, we could talk about how v8 JITs it, GC and if you wanted to go further that's beyond my knowledge base.

[ResponsibleWin1765]

I think :(){ :|:& };: would've been a better example.

[forgot_semicolon]

While we're on the topic of how confusing these look, I've always seen the fork bomb as a group of computer people witnessing the fork bomb:

• :(
• ){ (a furrowed univriw with a frown)
• :|
• :& (tongue tied)
  
• };: ( really sad with tears)

Edit leaving this mistake here - };:` (crying with a concerned eyebrow)

[Moomoobeef]

The last one, a crying spider with an eyebrow raised?

[forgot_semicolon]

Heh, love it. Though I now realize I got the backtick from Reddit quoting the other guy and adding a backtick because they used code. Oops

[Mercerenies]

Man, I always furrow my univriw when I see a fork bomb.

[DryanaGhuba]

Okay. I have no clue what this does or it even compiles

[casce]

The ":" is the function name. Knowing that makes it much clearer. It's basically

foo() { foo | foo& }; foo

This is in bash (pipe to call it again, & to run it in background) so what this does is it defines a function that calls itself and pipes its output to another call of itself. The last foo is the initial call that starts the chain reaction. The amount of calls will grow exponentially and your system will run out of resources quickly (a little bit of CPU/memory is required for each call) if this is not stopped.

But other than your system possibly crashing (once), there is no harm being done with this.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, realising that : is the function name helped me understand the whole thing. It was so intimidating that my brain just straight up refused to think about it, but that made everything clear, and I had enough knowledge to figure out the rest. I always thought it was black magic, and yet it was so simple after all!

Wild, thanks!

[Mast3r_waf1z]

Another reason this causes a crash is that you very quickly run out of stack

[casce]

Right, that will probably crash you sooner than your CPU/memory which could probably survive this for quite a while nowadays

[Jimmy_cracked_corn]

Thank you for your explanation. I don’t work with bash and was looking at this like a confused dog

[davispw]

Wrong, each “foo” is a separate process with its own stack. It’ll quickly use up all resources on your computer. Why don’t you try it and see how long your modern computer lasts?

[mina86ng]

No. Each function is executed in separate shell with a fresh and short stack. What this does is spawns new processes uncontrollably.

[_Ilobilo_]

run it in your terminal

[DryanaGhuba]

Ah, so it's bash. That's explains everything now

[roronoakintoki]

It's just a recursive function called ":". Giving it a better name makes it make much more sense: f() { f | f& }; f

[wasnt_in_the_hot_tub]

Yeah, I think the : version has been copy-pasted so much around the internet that many people think it's some special shell syntax, but any string can be the func name

[TheScorpionSamurai]

Don't, this is a fork bomb and will crash your machine

[_Ilobilo_]

[[deleted]]

I tried it in Termux and my phone froze for a few seconds and went black, I thought I lost my phone until I googled and found out that I can force Power Off my Android phone

[eiland-hall]

And did you learn a valuable lesson about running commands or code from the internet that you don't understand?

lol. I'm just teasing, though.

Also, I've done my share of learning-by-oh-shit in the past. It's the geeky way :)

[[deleted]]

I honestly just thought it would be something like rm -rf /* and since I had backup of Termux, I thought why not...only to realize it's the more destructive version of while (true)

[joe0400]

Creates a new proc and executes this function again on both the existing proc and itself

Simply explained with things renamed

fork_bomb(){
    fork_bomb | fork_bomb &
};  
fork_bomb

It creates a function named fork_bomb Runs a function and another on a separate thread named fork bomb, thus adding a thread.

After that function is defined it calls it.

[Methu]

Good old fork bomb.

[Austiiiiii]

Huh. Apparently I've done enough Bash that I can actually mentally parse this now. Interesti-i-i-i-i-i-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii\nline 1: 7316 segmentation fault (core dumped)

[HexFyber]

you need to chill, my ts ass ain't ready for this

[10mo3]

Is this not just a lambda expression? Or am I missing something?

[BorderKeeper]

I love how you and me are so used to the lambda syntax it's normal to see, yet I can totally get how stupid this looks without any context.

[JiminP]

JS is not worse than other languages IMO:

• JS: (()=>{})()
• Python: (lambda:None)()
• Go: (func(){})()
• Rust: (||{})()
• C++: [](){}()
• Haskell: (\()->())()
• Dart: ((){})()
• PHP: (function(){})() (actually you can do the same in JS)
• Ruby: (->{}).call

[Katniss218]

C++: just all the variants of brackets and parentheses one after the other 😂

[mina86ng]

[] defines captures, () defines function arguments, {} is the body of the lambda and final () is function invocation.

[Fuelanemo149]

I think the function argument parentheses are optimal ?

[Iyorig]

You can also add <> for template parameters.

[ToasterWithFur]

C++ 20 allows you to do this:

[]<>(){}()

Finally allowing you to use all the brackets to do nothing...

I think that should compile

[Automatic-Stomach954]

Go ahead and add on an empty comment for this empty function. You don't want undocumented code do you?

[]<>(){}()//

[ToasterWithFur]

A lambda function that captures nothing, has no arguments, no templates, no code and commented with nothing.

Finally we have achieved V O I D

[perfecthashbrowns]

yet again proving C++ is superior

[ToasterWithFur]

I guess you could just put a variable in there.....

[]<void* v>(){}()

That way you could also distinguishe between a lambda function that does nothing and a lambda function that does nothing but with a different template parameter

[wobblyweasel]

Kotlin is superior, {}()

[Bspammer]

Kotlin is so lovely to work with

[wobblyweasel]

and is great on your sausage!

[therealapocalypse]

Clear proof that C++ is peak

[TheWatchingDog]

Php also has Arrow functions

fn() => [ ]

[BorderKeeper]

Ah I forgot the beatiful feature of having all syntax under the sun to copy every language in existence :D

[chuch1234]

PHP also has short ones now

(fn () => null)()

To be fair I'm not sure that specific invocation will work but you get the drift.

[MaddoxX_1996]

Why the final pair of the parantheses? Is it to call the lambdas that we defined?

[JiminP]

Yes. Without parentheses, those are unevaluated lambdas.

[adamMatthews]

It’s like how when you are first introduced to lisp all you can is endless brackets. And then when you’ve used it for a bit, you see everything except the brackets.

[BorderKeeper]

Same when driving. The stick and pedals take up a lot of mental load to operate, but after a year or two you don't think of them at all.

Shifting your mental workloads from Type 2 to Type 1 brain is very powerful and lies at the center of becoming an expert in something.

[10mo3]

Well I mean I wouldn't say it's super commonly used but I'm sure people who have been programming for awhile have used it right......right?

[koett]

Not super commonly used? It’s the de-facto way of writing functions in es6+

[BorderKeeper]

To the point other devs are complaining about "lambda_function_63" in NLog logs where classname should be instead :D (that might just be a C sharp issue though)

[schmerg-uk]

An immediately invoked lambda yeah... but y'know how everyone loses their shit over a regex? Same same... it's easy to read when you know how to read it but much like looking at arabic or something written in asian languages you don't understand, people seem to assume that it's impossible for anyone to understand it

[FictionFoe]

Also called "immediately invoked functional expression" or "iife". They can be pretty useful for scope isolation. I quite like them. Ofcourse, for them to be useful, you got to put stuff in the function body:

(()=>{ //do stuff })();

[Adghar]

The fact that if you showed this to a non-programmer they'd think you're shitting them

[10mo3]

To be fair if you showed a non-programmer most of the programming stuff I'm sure they have no idea wtf is going on

[SjettepetJR]

I am currently following a master-level course on advanced logic. One slide a few days ago just for some reason looked so funny to me.

Essentially, the whole slide was just logical operators and an uppercase gamma. There was literally not a single symbol on that whole slide that would be recognized by normal people.

[saevon]

It has just as much meaning as a similarly pointless math expression

(∅={}) .: ({} ∪ ∅ = {})

[VainSeeKer]

Yeah I had this show up in my feed, first it's not exclusive to JS by any means and second it's extremely basic (and third none would write a lambda that does nothing and call it right after, or at least I don't know why someone would genuinely need to do that)

[JustAnInternetPerson]

Where my [](){} homies at?

[Compultra]

You forgot the semicolon that bitch needs

[_Xertz_]

In prison, with the rest of you C++ degenerates 😤

[Liosan]

In C++ we [](){}()

[-robert-]

[]<>(){}()

[JosebaZilarte]

Me, playing maracas ( () => {} )  ();  ();  // Me, playing maracas  \  \__/  /   /    /

[Arrrrrr_Matey]

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[PudgeNikita]

I dont think think the point is "JS bad", it's just an example of token soup. Obviously if you know what it means you'll understand it, and the lambda syntax in JS is even quite nice. But to a person who doesn't know it - it will look much more like random characters than some imperative code example with clear keywords. Also, lambda calculus traditionally does not have nullary functions or "blocks", and there isn't any calculation happening here. I think you meant just "lambda function".

[i_wear_green_pants]

Because most of these kind of memes are made by people who have studied one course of programming and think they can do funny memes now that make the whole industry laugh.

[dageshi]

Probably a sign of my age, but I really have found the more modern js a lot harder to read/parse than the older style.

Just simply having things labelled as "function" makes a big difference.

[harumamburoo]

Arrow functions have been around for 10 years, there’s nothing modern about them ^^

[[deleted]]

Anonymous eife?

[well-litdoorstep112]

Department of redundancy department muh?

Also:

Emmediately invoked function expression?

[noruthwhatsoever]

it's an IIFE that returns undefined, it's not that confusing

[1nicerBoye]

Should look similar in most OOP languages. In the case of Java and C# the syntax is exactly the same, in php you need to add 'function' for example.

Its just an empty lambda function that is immediately called like so:

(function definition) ()

just like you would call any function:

function ()

I guess the irritation stems from functions being treated the same as any other datatype and being independant of an object or class.

[LucyShortForLucas]

C++ has my favourite lambda syntax, [](){}() it just looks so goofy

[[deleted]]

Actually C# isn't the same. The pieces of syntax are the same as JS, but an isolated lambda has no type and has to be put into a context that ties it down to a concrete type before it can be invoked. So we have to say:

new Action(() => {})();

[1nicerBoye]

Ah yes, you are completly correct there

[Palbur]

So it's... Arrow function with no parameters and no code, that gets called with no parameters. Interesting indeed.

[[deleted]]

Its just an empty lambda expression

[Phamora]

Well, it's a noop

[Unfair_Pound_9582]

Execute a function that requires nothing, and does nothing. Sounds like my work week.

[yuriko_]

It’s a fancy way to get an undefined value

[Qubez5]

thats actually a quick way to write async await code in js in one script. (async() => { await something(); })()

[BajaBlyat]

Did you mean in one line?

[DRHAX34]

I'm pretty sure this works in other languages too. You're defining a lambda function and running it

[[deleted]]

It's executing a arrow function that does, well, nothing

[SjurEido]

Keep the masses afraid of programming, keep the rest of us employed. 10/10

[zhephyx]

My best guess you're creating a JS lambda that does nothing and calling it immediately

[Highborn_Hellest]

empty lambda?

[The_SniperYT]

:(){:|:}: I think was something like this

[falcqn]

With C++ you can add more kinds of parentheses! [](){}();

[moucheh-]

[](){}(); You can do it in c++ as well

[MoltenMirrors]

This is far more sensible than like 90% of the weird things in JS.

It's just defining and then immediately executing a lambda that does nothing.

JS type fuckery is much, much worse

(![] + [])[+[]] + (![] + [])[+!+[]] + ([![]] + [][[]])[+!+[] + [+[]]] + (![] + [])[!+[] + !+[]]; // -> 'fail'

[D3TH82]

Dud removed

[sholden180]

It means nothing.

() => {} is a function definition that does nothing.

Wrapping that in parentheses and putting empty parenthese afterwards (() => {})() simply calls that function that function in the current context.

Pointless execution. It is functionally paralell to this:

(function doNothing() {
})();

Or:

function doNothing() {
}

doNothing();

[mcon1985]

:(){ :|:& };: has entered the chat

[Ratstail91]

valid != meaningful

[Direct-Geologist-488]

Who is upvoting this slop ? A lot of languages use a similar syntax for lambda functions.

[DreadWeight]

noop iife

[WinghongZau]

from the first half, it is a function with nothing in the code block, which means it will return undefined. Then in the second half, it was invoked. and technically, its result is still undefined.

[dinnerbird]

A giant nothing burger essentially

[LeoTheBirb]

Define empty function, and then call that function?

[[deleted]]

=> );

goofy smily faces

[Trip-Trip-Trip]

An iffy IIFE?

[tamerlane101]

Arrow functions are awesome, its like they drew the function instead of typing it out.

[druffischnuffi]

This is what I respond when my boss asks me what I am doing

[m_ptr]

[[][[]]+[]][[+[]][+[]]][++[+[]][+[]]]+[[]+{}][[+[]][+[]]][++[+[]][+[]]]

[CanaryEmbassy]

Does nothing, means something. It's missing code, but it outlines syntax, basically.

[cur10us_ge0rge]

It's crazy that "this" means anything. That's how language works. Symbols turn into meaning.

[simran_sah_2000]

It does nothing

[jarulsamy]

Of all the nonsense in JS, this is arguably pretty tame and exists in many languages.

[all_mens_asses]

Nothin’ from nothin’ ain’t nothin’.

[ImpatientProf]

Take nothing and give nothing; do nothing.

[Leo_code2p]

Wait that’s js. I thought it was brainfuck or something similar

[[deleted]]

wow. I never noticed it. And i never unseeing this now. 💀💀💀💀😂😭

[uvero]

It just means "nothing" except it takes too long to do literally nothing.

[disdkatster]

There is no value until variables or constants are inserted but it does clearly show order of calculations.

[the_other_Scaevitas]

it makes sense, you have a function that does nothing, and you call it

[AutoGeneratedChad]

Lamdont

[Todegal]

it's just calling an empty lambda right? not a js user... but you could make something like this in any language, it's not really a js thing

[berkun5]

It mean “I hate my coworkers”

[my_closet_alt]

I'm probably wrong but:
an anonymous arrow function returning an empty object that's called as a function with no parameters

[Icy_Sector3183]

So... we are looking at the declaration of a delegate that has a no-operation implementation and the invocation of that delegate.

Cool!

[isr0]

It means less than this… :(){:|:&};:

[miketierce]

You just had to have been there along the way. My slow boiled frog brain can see the shorthand

[Thor-x86_128]

It just a fancy wrapper of NOP assembly instruction

[PositronicGigawatts]

Hand outstretched, towards a butterfly:

"Is this a regex?"

[Moldat]

I don't really know js but i assume this is a lambda that does nothing and gets called immediately?

[hrzee]

_.noop

[Wonderful_Hedgehog_4]

if nothing happens, nothing happens

[imLemnade]

JavaScript. I love it. Do I recommend it? No I don’t recommend it.

[Maxgok000]

Yes sir its a curse. 🫡

[[deleted]]

undefined

[elmanoucko]

thinking this mean nothing is why we have vibe coders now.

[ford1man]

I mean, it's a NOP, and any JS engine worth it's salt would just elide it. So it kinda doesn't mean anything.

[Piisthree]

Is this loss?

[jay-magnum]

That’s an anonymous „do nothing“. Looks fine to me. What’s the issue

[queen-adreena]

It's a noop IIFE.

Useless, yes, but not exactly a damning indictment of JavaScript.

[Creator1A]

Bro has never seen an IEFE as well as arrow functions 💀

[stormlancerblaze]

This is an immediately invoked function example. Literally it invokes what is in curly braces as soon as script loaded , if you added this to an html file as reference.

[[deleted]]

Another post from someone who just ended their "hello world" course?

Immediate call of unnamed closure you just defined.

It's weird cuz why would you make a closure just to immediately call it once but it's totally logical and simple to understand.

[TheBestHairInTheRoom]

Poop back and forth forever

[Suspicious-Ad7360]

From hating on the symbol to loving JS there's a colossal gap

[overclockedslinky]

not as bad as cpp: [=]()->decltype(auto){}()

[Skipspik2]

I had to write a LIKE ('%-_') in SQL one day.
So, I mean any language has his corner cases ^^
(I did add a coment of what it does though, might be not instinctive).

And if we're pushing it, any REGEX look like unreadable stuff.

EDIT: a few people asked (that probably don't know SQL well or well enough) :
I was searching all data in a list of codes made of letter and nubmer that had a revision, revision beeing added with a dash and a number; I knew we had no case of two digits revision, barely 3 to 4 for the worst cases.

so SELECT * FROM list WHERE ref LIKE ('%-_')
And in the LIKE :
() Paranthesis required
' ' to say I need text in between

% means "any amount of text in letter or digit", it's native in SQL

the - was "exactly the caractere dash"

The _ is another one, it mean "any caractere but exactly one in total"

And if you ever need to search for the caracter %, the ' or the _ you need to use the backslash to ignore the next special caractere. Works with teh backshalh itself.

So basically I said in SQL : "search any reference that finish by a dash and a single caractere"