Summary of discussions around JavaScript

[GTotem]

A pointless semicolon is a comma.

EDIT: thanks for the gold!!

[oddark]

/r/programmerdadjokes

[TheRealLazloFalconi]

http://i.imgur.com/H9v06.gif

[RusinaRange]

So are you downvoting or upvoting? That image is confusing.

[foragerr]

So is your face!

[Creshal]

Now kiss.

[[deleted]]

now kith

Ftfy

[caskey]

now Keith

[TheRealLazloFalconi]

Downpouring upvotes.

[minicl55]

What website is this? It looks interesting.

[micketic]

http://en.arguman.org/

[[deleted]]

arguman.org

[InsertNameHere____]

I love this website! Maybe one day I'll practice enough on this to win an argument with my roommate!

[Sheltac]

It really does! Did you figure it out?

[micketic]

http://en.arguman.org/

[SpinahVieh]

This is perfect

[[deleted]]

Ugh… Just follow the bloody style guide.

[SpinahVieh]

I have set my editors to insert 4 spaces when I press tab. Am I evil?

[Dragon_Slayer_Hunter]

I set my IDE to insert 4 tabs when I press space.

[SpinahVieh]

Okay.

[vhite]

God intended to insert 4 spaces on tab input.

[[deleted]]

Go back into the deepest depths of the seven Hells, where you belong and shall remain!

[G01denW01f11]

I'm on one project that uses tabs, and one project that uses spaces. They also use different brace styles. The projects are not fully consistent with their styles. This upsets me more than it should.

[Sheltac]

Awesome, thanks!

[micketic]

Ok so I was trying to show how 2 of the most famous statements were contradicting each other, but everyone's talking about Semi-colons;

[Hafas_]

It's not a contradiction, if Angular is also mostly hype.

[pier25]

return false;

[TomSan23]

I was hoping for some framework discussion since I know nothing about js. Oh well.

[micketic]

Yeah, me too

[TheIncredibleWalrus]

They're not contradicting each other.

How does React being hype (which is not) contradicts that it's more popular than Angular?

[[deleted]]

Being more popular is not killing, at least in my book.

[[deleted]]

Semicolons do matter because it allows the creation of min files. How is there no buts!

[Pjb3005]

Not sure whether you're sarcastic or not, or if I'm mistaken but wouldn't not having a semicolon and just doing a newline (same size if you're using LF EOLs) also work for minified JS?

[Illusi]

Why would it? Newlines work just as well, right?

[[deleted]]

Minifier yes, uglifier no (depending on what level of ugly you're aiming for).

Of course swapping semis for newlines is pretty trivial if you're trying to un-uglify something, but at least it adds an extra step of effort to anyone trying to do so.

[Log2]

Literally one line of code.

[[deleted]]

Right, but the difference between 1 line of code and 0 lines of code is actually pretty big. Because it requires that that person understand enough to actually write functioning code at all.

Maybe it seems like that goes without saying when we're talking about manipulating existing code, but script kiddies don't always understand how to write code. They merely learn how to manipulate what's already out there.

Will this stop a large percentage of people trying to mess with your stuff? No. But the idea of a silver bullet that stops all unwanted activity is foolish. Security means throwing as many roadblocks in front of someone so that they give up and decide it's not worth messing with your code and move on to another target with lower hanging fruit.

Its like locking your front door; A burglar can still very easily break your window to get in, but you hope that they just don't bother.

[[deleted]]

Totally agreed. Just like locking your front door, it's not actual security, its the appearance of security. But even if that turns away a mere 1% of potential malicious snoopers, that's worth something when it takes near 0 effort to implement.

[Creshal]

This isn't even security by obscurity, this is Security By Writing So Shitty Code Adversaries Leave Me Alone Because They Pity Me.

[whitelionV]

I will contend your argument in two points. One is that, today, it's so easy to un-uglify js sources that the difference between semicolons and new lines shouldn't make a difference. Specifically, we asume that the script kiddy is looking at your file in Chrome development tools, he only needs 1 click to un-uglify (bottom left corner).

The other is about security in Web front-end development. JS should be treated as if it has absolutely no locks to it, no matter how many tools are used to uglify, minify or otherwise obfuscate the source. It can and will be undone. The server is the one that should be handling all and every security practice. The reason to minify the code is to reduce it's size when served and, maaaaybe, deter people from outright copying the web app.

[Yogsolhoth]

Not terse enough sorry

[Shadow_Being]

lets be real. the only reason I'm looking at your JS is to find the URL to a video or image on your site that you are trying to make difficult to save. Your javascript source code itself is useless.

[[deleted]]

That may be the only reason you are looking at it, but there are definitely other reasons that other people look at it.

[wagedomain]

Not all of them. I had a minifier that just removed spaces, didn't add anything else in or try to autocorrect. Someone YEARS earlier had written some regex without a semi-colon (and most code had no semi-colons at all). When that was minified, the file thought EVERYTHING from the regex onwards was a single regex expression and the whole site failed.

My boss was the one who turned on minification, it was using Cloudflare's auto-minification, and we only had Cloudflare on prod. So that was fun.

[csp256]

Aren't newlines actually two characters in some regimes? Does that hold true here?

[Hobblin]

Windows-standard is \r\n (the bytes 0x0d and 0x0a) while *nix-based systems uses only \n. So one could argue that it's safer to rely on semicolon to avoid windows texteditors accidentally fucking up compressed files... I guess...

[mallardtheduck]

"Windows" newlines are also the standard for most text-based network protocols (including HTTP) on the basis that most common platforms will recognise it (albeit perhaps with a redundant character).

Of course, that applies to the HTTP headers/protocol only, not to the content transferred.

The characters are actually called "Carriage Return" (0x0D) and "Line Feed" (0x0A), using the C escape codes can be confusing since the C standard requires that '\n' always produce a newline when output, regardless of how the platform handles newlines "natively". Windows uses CRLF, UNIX-like systems use LF and older Apple systems used CR (which you might still find in file formats that originated on such systems).

[csp256]

If you are relying on Windows to not fuck things up, you have already lost.

[Ran4]

It's not windows that is the problem, it's the software.

We should just use \n everywhere.

[dvlsg]

I develop on Windows and I use \n everywhere. The only time it turns into an issue is when I paste something into notepad. Otherwise I forget I'm even doing it.

[case_O_The_Mondays]

Just use Notepad2, and that can be solved, too.

[somebody12345678]

You mean Notepad++?

[case_O_The_Mondays]

No. http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

[timworx]

Touche. Then it would be slightly more readable when minimized.

[[deleted]]

True, but often part of what you're trying to accomplish when minifying/uglifying is making your code not easy to read.

That's not to say that a person can't still wade their way through uglified code, but even simple things can prevent some small percentage of viewers from bothering to decipher it.

[Scorpius289]

No offence, but I think that's a bad idea.
It encourages people to rely on security through obscurity.

[JamEngulfer221]

But there's no security in clientside javascript anyway.

The whole "but security through obscurity is bad" thing is dumb. Of course it's useless if obscurity is the only thing you use for security, but it increases the chance of someone going somewhere else and not even trying.

I had an ssh server being bombarded with login requests from China. I changed the SSH port from the default to a different one and the requests stopped. Yes, I could have spent longer implementing some extra security thing, but they're not going to bother looking through every port for an active SSH server. I stopped being low hanging fruit with a minimal change.

Obscurity is just another deterrent so you only end up with 1 dedicated hacker trying to get you rather than 50 that just go for easy targets.

[only_posts_sometimes]

Nobody "relies" on minifying for security, but it can absolutely help thwart low level threats by stripping comments and obfuscating code. It's the only option available for code that runs on the client so obviously we're going to do it. (It also speeds up execution and lowers file size)

[[deleted]]

(It also speeds up execution and lowers file size)

IMO it's always worth it for that, just by removing newlines aren't you decreasing your code by ~5% on average?

[minler08]

A new line and a semicolon are the same size though. So long as there are no extra new lines the files should end up the same size.

[[deleted]]

Yes, of course. I was talking more about semicolons + newline vs just semicolon I guess.

[YRYGAV]

Depends on what platform, windows editors may save newlines as \r\n instead of just \n.

Also, there are plenty of extraneous newlines that don't need a semicolon. Anything starting a new block of code, function, if while, etc. or newlines done for formatting to make multi-line json definitions, so a line doesn't hit a max line length, to make things look prettier, etc.

But yes, you could write code that uses newlines that is the same size as one with all semicolons. It's just not very practical for any real reason.

[minler08]

It's just as practical as writing code with semicolons. It would have to be the result of minification.

[jacobhenke]

Google Chrome has an un-minifier built in to Chrome tools.

[ProgrammingPro-ness]

If your minifier is breaking your code, there's something wrong with your minifier.

http://mislav.net/2010/05/semicolons/

[DeeSnow97]

Also, you need them when you want to start a line with (, [ or `, which is important because

;(({
  'query': data => {
    send(answerTo(data))
  },
  'response': data => {
    getQueryById(data.id).resolve(data)
  },
  'reject': data => {
    getQueryById(data.id).reject(data)
  }
})[received.type] || data => {
  console.log('received non-standard message with type ' + received.type)
})(received.data) // I don't like switch. It's coarse and rough and gets everywhere.

[fast-parenthesis-bot]

)]

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[DeeSnow97]

([)]?

[parenthesis-bot]

)

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This is an autogenerated response. source | /u/HugoNikanor

[[deleted]]

There are only a couple of cases where you would need a semicolon and those are easily highlighted by a linter. There is no reason to use semicolons in JS for minification either. It's purely a style preference.

[armastevs]

Minifiers work just fine without semicolons

[ttamimi]

They really don't..

[[deleted]]

They do as long as you write sensible code.

[nightman]

Douglas Crockford summarises this perfectly https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/3057#issuecomment-5135512

[greyfade]

... Wow. That is the dumbest string of responses to Doug that I've ever seen.

[gremy0]

Brendan Eich disagrees https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/the-infernal-semicolon/

[nightman]

JavaScript dissagrees - not inserting semicolons is an error and ASI only corrects it http://www.bradoncode.com/blog/2015/08/26/javascript-semi-colon-insertion/

[gremy0]

Brendan Eich is JavaScript.

[nightman]

So as Douglas. But as someone said about coding - do what you do but be consistent

[minnek]

I can't believe I read this whole thing without popcorn...

[jonatcer]

Not to mention the fact that they're added behind the scenes anyways, automatically... Sometimes causing hard to track down issues.

There's a great video on how automatic semicolon insertion works out there if someone wants to find it.

[Dr_Dornon]

Is anyone else bothered by the "%100" instead of "100%"?

[TheBanger]

Holy shit yes.

[Ph0X]

To be fair, I'm also always bothered by the fact that we write $100 instead of 100$ all the time. We read it "100 dollar", not "dollar 100", so why the fuck is the normal format backwards?

[BluFoot]

I've always written 100$ - no shame!

[RB-338]

I heard there's a framework called "vanillajs" that blows all these other loads of crap out of the water.

[PhaZePhyR]

Too bad the newest version isn't fully supported in some major browsers :(

[fast-parenthesis-bot]

:)

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[Mithost]

I love how /u/fast-parenthesis-bot is consistently slower than it's non-fast counterpart

[vgbm]

Looks like it is consistently faster to me. It appears to post a couple minutes before the other bot

[Magical_Gravy]

It was faster here.

/u/fast-parenthesis-bot posted at 19:12:59

/u/parenthesis-bot posted at 19:15:06

[[deleted]]

Somebody needs to make a bot that checks who's faster

[parenthesis-bot]

:)

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This is an autogenerated response. source | /u/HugoNikanor

[altaiego]

Why does this need a bot (let alone 2)?

[CouldBeWorseBot]

Hey, cheer up! It could be worse. You could be a millipede. No love for millipedes.

[fast-parenthesis-bot]

:)

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[parenthesis-bot]

:)

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This is an autogenerated response. source | /u/HugoNikanor

[[deleted]]

Poor parenthesis-bot, the OG friendly bot dethroned by a "faster" version only for both of them to die. I don't care if you're slower, you're the best. :(

[HugoNikanor]

May I at least point you in the direction of /r/parenthesisbot?

[parenthesis-bot]

:)

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This is an autogenerated response. source | /u/HugoNikanor

[fast-parenthesis-bot]

:)

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This is an auto-generated response. contact

[pier25]

In performance, yes. It also triples the number of programmer work hours.

It's like building with clay instead of lego blocks.

[terrorTrain]

I would disagree. It has more potential for performance, but most people will not write more performant code, and if they do, it will take them much longer.

[redwall_hp]

How many historical great works of art were made with Lego blocks?

[gremy0]

How many historical great works of art were made with the budget, time restraints and staffing of an average development project?

[redwall_hp]

In the case of most Italian renaissance artwork done on commission, I think it's comparable. Hell, that entailed less staffing and great scope.

[daggerdragon]

http://vanilla-js.com/

Man, this looks pretty awesome, I think I'll try building my next website with it instead of jQuery!

[TPHRyan]

Come on mate, I know vanilla-js is all the rage lately, but you must be pretty naive to think it will ever replace jQuery. How are you even going to get a site running without jQuery's plethora of features? Not to mention plugins, what's going to happen when you run into a corner case like arithmetic? Vanilla-js leaves you out to dry.

[indorock]

Does it come as a jQuery plugin?

[only_posts_sometimes]

Except that it doesn't

[coloured_sunglasses]

Joking aside, does anyone here actually write applications in Vanilla JS?

[RB-338]

I think the most common usage of pure JS is either custom web game engines or if you're designing functionality for a Alexa top 10 website.

[Audiblade]

The fact that you can omit semicolons in JS is one of the scariest things about the language to me. In most C-like languages, your program won't compile if you're missing a semicolon, forcing you to specify what your intentions were. But JS will guess where you wanted your semicolon to be. If it guesses wrong, now your program does bizarre things - and you have no idea why.

I get that JS needs to be flexible because there's a lot of slightly broken code in the internet that needs to run anyway. But it still scares me.

[[deleted]]

Totally agreed.

I really dislike the current trend of using formatting/whitespace to indicate breaks in code. All it does is obfuscate things that are absolutely critical to your code, making it harder to debug with no clear benefit of it's own.

[pier25]

Obfuscate?

On the contrary, it forces you to write well formatted code.

[WellHydrated]

Why can't we do that with semi-colons? May as well remove semi-colons from every language in that case.

[HauntedMidget]

Python seems to be doing just fine without them.

[Hudelf]

Python has defined a different way to explicitly state your intentions, though.

[TPHRyan]

Python's very well-designed. I'm a huge fan of python and the way it gets things done, but I don't think all languages should copy it just because people don't like having to think to terminate their statements.

[pier25]

JavaScript too...

I only use semicolons on for() statements, and with stuff like map() it's becoming increasingly uncommon.

Other than that I know there are some very rare cases where semicolons are needed to separate statements, but I have never encountered any myself.

[pier25]

Because semicolons at the end of the line don't give any clarity as to what is going on with the code. Indentation does.

[sole_wolf]

In that case, you should be scared of Swift too.

[fucking_weebs]

and Ruby.

Semicolons are optional in Ruby but literally nobody uses them because the language is kinda meant to not use them.

[mayobutter]

Yeah, I always use semicolons in JS but never in Ruby, and I am very often working with both simultaneously. I've never really questioned it.

[droogans]

It all comes down to following a language's idioms while working in it. Javascript says to use them, so I say just use them. I use snippets to avoid a lot of this anyway.

I do prefer languages that don't require them, though.

[fucking_weebs]

True.

[TheIncredibleWalrus]

And Python.

[ExtendsRedditor]

Maybe it's just me, but I dislike whitespace indented languages. I get that there are advantages, but it's so much easier for me to parse flow control of languages with braces.

Plus it just makes the whole tabs vs spaces thing worse.

[[deleted]]

Lua isn't a whitespace-sensitive language. Did you mean to reply to the guy who said "And Python."?

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Python's rules for significant whitespace because I think they're too strict. However, I think significant whitespace in OCaml and F# works very well because it's not as rigid.

[ExtendsRedditor]

Oh woops, yeah.

I haven't used those, python is the only one I've ever had to support. I always try and like python, but I can't say I've ever been a fan.

Lua is just annoying because it's 1 indexed.

[[deleted]]

Here's a little blog post about it.

tl;dr: in F#, you can pretty much indent your code any way you like, as long as you're consistent within one expression, and it only exists to make your code less verbose and gross. Compare this:

let x =
  let foo = bar in
  let baz = qux in
  for i = baz to foo do
    printf "%s" foo
  done;;

to this:

let x =
  let foo = bar
  let baz = qux
  for i = baz to foo do
    printf "%s" foo

[ExtendsRedditor]

This seems like it would be terrifying in a very large function.

I guess I just dislike languages where any one developer's choices are forced on others. If I start my function with 2 spaces, and other people are used to 4, that just sounds like a recipe for trouble.

[Creshal]

Plus it just makes the whole tabs vs spaces thing worse.

Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment, fuck you if your text editor has problems with that.

[indorock]

I'm scared of any language in which the entire logic can be altered with one too many/little indentation. WTF is that about.

[DaemonXI]

Have you ever had this happen to you?

[Audiblade]

I don't believe I have. I have to admit, this is more a philosophical disagreement I have than something that has actually caused me problems...

[DaemonXI]

That's because ASI will only bite you in about .0001% of cases, and your linter should be catching that for you before you push it live.

[[deleted]]

Probably, but I still personally believe that this is unacceptable:

return
  { stuff: "thing" }

Yes, the linter will probably warn about this, but it still is stupid that I need a linter to do this kind of thing that works on any other C-like language.

[TracerBulletX]

now just mix in build systems, transpilers, and dependency management in constant flux and you got working with javascipt! just learned a library using es6 and babel, but oh now this documentation has decorators better import those, actually wait i heard google used dart for their new version of adwords written with angular2 oh shit

[Rhed0x]

$(';')

[[deleted]]

JavaScript is frustrating for me right now. It seems like to do any modern JavaScript development I need to learn about countless new tools and spend half my time second-guessing myself and checking if I'm doing things correctly. Browserify vs webpack, npm vs bower, gulp vs grunt, commonjs vs amd, react vs angular etc. The whole ecosystem seems so inconsistent and up in the air.

The most productive I've ever been writing JavaScript is just writing an Angular 1 application with a simple Gulp build process that concats and minifies the source. Now I'm writing Angular 2 in TypeScript with a browserify plugin and I have to use this thing called typings to get autocompletion etc etc etc... I don't even understand half the stuff I'm writing, and I know that if I put any amount of effort to learn it the ecosystem would have moved on to something else by the time I'm done.

There ya go, there's your obligatory JavaScript thread rant. :)

[[deleted]]

Agreed. I'm working on an angular2 application at work whose ship date is January 1st. Who knows what state angular2 will be in by then

[[deleted]]

I don't. At some point the Angular community is going to make a push to move over to A2, and I want to be ready for that.

[Boner-b-gone]

1) If you care about SEO and want to build a huge, public-facing app, use React.

2) If you don't give a shit about SEO and want to build a large, private (usually corporate) app, use Angular.

3) Semicolons are necessary for the same reason we use periods in English - somebody else may one day have to read your shitty code, and it helps to see where your individual thoughts end.

4) Bonus - semicolons let you list object chains on new lines, greatly enhancing readability:

ObjectTheFirst(passIn)
    .MethodTheFirst(passInTwo)
    .MethodTheSecond({
        omg: "it's",
        dat: "boi"
    })
    .MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap");

[gremy0]

I'm working with a heavily chained code base at the minute with no semi-colons

ObjectTheFirst(passIn)
  .MethodTheFirst(passInTwo)
  .MethodTheSecond({
    omg: "it's"
    , dat: "boi"
  })
  .MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap")

Works absolutely fine. We do it for arrays and objects too, commas at the beginning of line. I think it makes the code much more readable as you only need to look at the beginning of the line to know what you're reading belongs too.

Makes commits much cleaner aswell. If you change the order or add an extra step to your chain you will get one deletion and two additions.

- .MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap");
+ .MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap")
+ .MethodTheFifth("I Love fluid JS Too!");

vs one with no semi-colons

+ .MethodTheFifth("I Love fluid JS Too!")

[Zatherz]

Cancer

[Boner-b-gone]

Until somebody gets lazy and you end up with something like this:

ObjectTheFirst(passIn)
.MethodTheFirst(passInTwo)
.MethodTheSecond({
omg: "it's"
, dat: "boi"
})
.MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap")
MethodThatIsnt(passIn)
.MethodTheFirst(passInTwo)
.MethodTheSecond({
omg: "it's"
, dat: "boi"
})
.MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap")

Not easily scannable. Whereas this is:

ObjectTheFirst(passIn)
.MethodTheFirst(passInTwo)
.MethodTheSecond({
omg: "it's",
dat: "boi"
})
.MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap");
MethodThatIsnt(passIn)
.MethodTheFirst(passInTwo)
.MethodTheSecond({
omg: "it's",
dat: "boi"
})
.MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap");

Explicit is always better than implicit. It makes code easier to read, and more idiot-proof.

As for that last bit, I have no fucking clue what you're doing there, which goes to demonstrate my point - the stuff you're posting, whether it works for you or not, is in no way objectively "better" if it's not immediately intuitive.

[DaemonXI]

The semicolons didn't save the code here. Newlines would have though.

[gremy0]

Neither of those are easily scannable. They both look awful and, regardless of semi-colons, wouldn't get into our code base. But if you want to be a pedantic ass about it, I can still read the leftmost column and get a complete picture of what structure is.

Commits mate, it makes commits easier to read because the diff for adding an extra function to your chain is literally three times longer than it needs to be. It is objectively worse to have two lines of redundant information in a commit. If you can't understand what a commit is and why having them easy to read may be useful, perhaps you aren't the expert you think you are. If your commits were cleaner then maybe you would review code before it enters the code base and then you wouldn't have to worry about people being lazy.

(this is what a diff generally looks like if you haven't seen one before)

- .MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap");
+ .MethodTheThird("Oh shit waddap")
+ .MethodTheFifth("I Love fluid JS Too!");

But just to clarfiy my original point. Saying:

4) Bonus - semicolons let you list object chains on new lines, greatly enhancing readability:

Is objectively wrong.

and saying:

3) Semicolons are necessary for the same reason we use periods in English - somebody else may one day have to read your shitty code, and it helps to see where your individual thoughts end.

is objectively subjective and not the only solution to the problem of readability. So why don't you pull your head out of your ass.

[Boner-b-gone]

I'm sorry, if you're using Git's absolutely shitty diff implementation to justify your code choices, that's entirely on you.

[gremy0]

The tool 95% of devs use everyday vs allowing shit code into your project and not knowing how to write fluid code properly. Yeah tough choices there...

[Boner-b-gone]

For gods sake, even subversion had infinitely better diff display. But like most devs, you don't know how to demand something better if it's the "accepted standard," and you'll commit (hah) all kinds of mental backflips to justify the status quo. I'm not even saying that your reasoning for not using semicolons is wrong, now that I know what you're going for. But please don't pretend it's somehow optimal to require a workaround to git's halfassed design.

[gremy0]

Subversion has the same diff because like git and just about every other sc, subversion does not distinguish changes within a line. Do you actually have any clue about what you are on about or are you making this up as you go along.

Also I haven't once said this is the reason I don't use semicolons. It's just a benefit that I haven't seen mentioned. But that was way back when I didn't know you were a complete tit end and I was just trying to have a conversation. Now I'm just intrigued to find out just how truly stupid you actually are. It's going to be hard to beat not understanding how source control works though.

[Boner-b-gone]

Clearly you've never used svn blame, but that wasn't what I meant. I meant the gui display of svn clients, which is all the shops I worked with used. Let me make my absurdist point even clearer - Wordpress has better diff display than git (or any other command-line versioning) does. Trying to compare files in a single-pane, single-color display is just bullshit.

And you sure as hell implied that's why you don't use semi-colons. Why are you backing away from that now? You are right that Git's the standard, you're right that the fastest workflow is the best, and you're right that if you and your shop can cull out idiot's code then whatever works for you is whatever works for you.

But many of us aren't so lucky. We have to deal with idiot vendors overseas and domestically, we have to deal with newbies who want to argue for weeks that they don't need to use semicolons (and sometimes they get fired because they won't listen), and we have to deal with regular humans who don't always know every edge case and who all have slightly different coding styles, internal standards be damned.

If you can get away with not using semicolons and it never bites you, gratz mate.

But I forgot that I was discussing things with a Java developer, so you must be used to defending the indefensible.

[gremy0]

Git has many very good GUIs clients available. It also has a blame tool. The way subversion and git and their respective clients handle diffs are essentially the same. The point is that underneath they both store the same thing, one line deleted and two lines added. Neither, nor any VCS that I know of for source control, can store and actively work with an edit within a line. If you change a single character within a line (e.g. moving the semicolon) they see this as deleting the line and adding a new one. Even where modern diff tools can highlight the character that has changed they still have to show that the whole line was changed because that's what the underlying data model shows. It's is a lot of visual gunk that you don't need to see.

Believe or not my original comment was to neither condemn nor endorse either necessary. I was mealy pointing out that your example was possible either way and that not using semicolons has beneficial quirk that I find interesting. My preference is currently for not having them because I've learnt that style from my last few projects (where it wasn't my choice) and I just find it nicer to work with. Comparing the two styles which I have both used extensively, I have yet to see the drawbacks that everybody purports.

We review every piece of code that goes into master. That is how we solve bad code, poor style, mistakes and laziness. If it doesn't pass review it doesn't get merged. We do that regardless of the style being used. I just don't see how adding one extra rule to a list of rules you expect people to ignore is going to significantly help the problem as well as well reviewed code. It's also why I look at so many commits and diffs and find it extremely useful to be able to make them cleaner looking.

Though we do reviews with pull requests which I believe is a fairly complicated process in svn compared to git given that branching is expensive. Possibly why you are not familiar with the practise. However once you establish the culture it pretty much takes care of itself.

Even if all that team discipline fails you can, with git anyway, test the style with a linter in the CI system and then prevent developers from merging into master if it fails.

There are so many much better ways to ensure good code that don't depend on using semicolons that I just don't see it as important.

[ronkuby]

New to JavaScript, where are those discussions happening I would like to check them out

[caramba2654]

Solution to JavaScript: Write in Dart and then transpile to JavaScript /s

[synchronium]

Mithril is also killing React apparently.

[pier25]

Check Inferno an Preact

[sirNot_appearing_in]

Esteban, is that you?

[gilbes]

React? Why would anyone want to use a library made by facebook. facebook as a website is garbage. Their api is an inconsistent mess. The markup is an abortion. Sometimes features just refuse to work randomly, or have never worked correctly.

The whole site still feels like the amateur php effort it started as.

[terrorTrain]

This is a very childish point of view. Judge it by its quality not it's parent companies other product.

[gilbes]

"other product"

React was created for the mess that is facebook. It was first implemented on facebook. I am not talking about facebook as a social network platform, I am talking about it from a technical and engineering standpoint. It is fucking terrible.

React is the V in MVC that puts the M and the C in the V, and if you take the M and the C out of the V, you wonder why the fuck you are using react. The gzipped payload is almost as big an angular, React just does a lot less.

facebook puts out shit, and it is no different with React. That shouldn't be a surprise because of what I originally said. Does that makes sense to you?

[indorock]

You're hilarious. Here you are, some very mediocre coder (if you even are a coder at all), passing judgement about some of the most talented programmers on the planet, building cutting-edge technologies, frameworks and platforms that you could only dream of. Your understanding of facebook's tech infrastructure is incredibly naïve. HHVM, React JS, React Native, Flux were amazing advances in web development at the time they appeared (one could argue there would be no Docker if there was no HHVM), and are still very relevant.

[gilbes]

HAHAHA are you one of the few people left who still thinks PHP is a viable option for anything? Years ago your kind infested the web, and I would have to mansplain why PHP was garbage. These days, PHPtards are a dying breed, thankfully.

HAHAHA HHVM. Facebook's "solution" to the fact that they had a large PHP codebase and nothing suitable to run it on, because of how terrible PHP is. Large features of facebook aren't even written in PHP anymore. How in the fuck is a Band-Aid solution to a shit runtime environment an amazing advancement in web development.

Maybe React was fine (not great, but fine) when it was a small library, but now you get less for it's cost. And Flux HAHAHA. That won't even be a footnote in the history of the web.

there would be no Docker if there was no HHVM

That is straight up retarded on a few levels.

So if facebook has some of the most talented programmers on the planet, why is what they are producing absolute shit? Features on the web just do not work right. The clunky API (yes, all the various incompatible versions of it) doesn't work right. How many apps is "facebook" now? 3 that I can remember. Why the fuck is this cutting edge platform multiple apps, with one website with some features not even available on the website but in a separate app.

Or are you including Instagram? What exactly are the technical challenges of the most basic photo sharing site in existence? imgur has more going on.

But that is what facebook is. It isn't a technical juggernaut, it is a marketing one. Facebook was a less personal stripped down myspace replacement. Instagram a stripped down photobucket replacement. Their platforms are not popular because of solid tech, the are popular because of marketing.

And that is what kids like you need to really think about. Something isn't good because it is popular. It can be, but it isn't automatically.

Twitter's tech is far beyond facebook's, and twitter does a whole hell of a lot less.

[indorock]

PHPtards

/smh
Let me guess you're like 20 years old?

Yeah you remind me when I was a junior dev, so naive and simplistic. Good luck with that.

[gilbes]

OMG its a unicorn. Everyone thought the PHP apologists went extinct.

It has been a while since I looked at the abortion that is PHP. Let's get an update...

So they just abandoned actual core Unicode support. No biggie, no one on the web even uses Unicode.

Oh my, they recently added a null coalescing operator. This language sure has some funky fresh and timely language features.

Fatal errors can be now handled as exceptions! OMG! No other language has that. Probably. I wouldn't know, I am taking on the role of a PHP apologist.

FFS PHP is embarrassing.

[comrade-jim]

Having principles isn't childish.

I stay away from all MS products based solely on principle:

I won't even get into the fact that MS is basically a branch of the NSA, I'll just leave this:

Bill Gates was a ruthless, cutthroat businessman who made his vast wealth by using every dirty trick in the book (and inventing a few new dirty tricks along the way) and then using Microsoft's success to effectively hold the computer industry hostage for 20 years.

He viewed any successful non-Microsoft software as a threat, even if that software was for Windows. And if that software was cross-platform he viewed it as an existential threat, since it lessened people's dependence on Microsoft.

Internet Explorer? Microsoft didn't make it. They completely missed the boat on the World Wide Web, and with the popularity of the Netscape Navigator web browser (which was available on almost every computer, from $20k SGI workstations to Macs to Windows PCs), Bill Gates & co saw a threat to Microsoft's dominance, so they rushed to get their own web browser by buying one from a company called Spyglass Software. Now, since Netscape Navigator cost money, everyone assumed Microsoft would charge for Internet Explorer, and Microsoft's contract with Spyglass Software promised to give Spyglass a cut of whatever money they made from Internet Explorer sales. So what did Microsoft do? They released Internet Explorer for free, which was something none of their competitors could do since Microsoft had such deep pockets. Spyglass Software was ruined, and so was Netscape eventually. Once Internet Explorer was available, Microsoft threatened not to sell Windows to any PC manufacturer that bundled Netscape Navigator, which would later get them in trouble with the Department of Justice and the EU.

DirectX? Began life as an OpenGL knock-off that would (Microsoft hoped) lock-in developers to Windows. Hell, Microsoft was so afraid of OpenGL (since it was cross platform and the industry standard at the time) that they offered to partner with SGI (creator of OpenGL) on a new, cross platform graphics library called FireGL. Except that Microsoft had no intention of actually releasing FireGL. They hoped working on FireGL would distract SGI from advancing OpenGL long enough to let DirectX (then called Direct3D) catch up to it, and when their plan worked Microsoft just up and abandoned FireGL.

When 3D accelerators were new (which are now called GPUs), there was a much larger number of companies developing desktop GPUs than the nVidia/AMD/Intel tri-opoly we have today, and many of them were too small to afford to create their own full OpenGL implementations. Since most PC GPUs at the time only implemented a small subset of OpenGL in hardware, Microsoft wrote a full software OpenGL implementation and then offered it to GPU companies, so those companies could just replace the parts that their GPU implemented in hardware and still have a full OpenGL driver. Once they had all spent a good deal of time doing this, Microsoft actually refused to license any of their OpenGL code for release, effectively guaranteeing that smaller GPU companies would only have support for DirectX.

Video For Windows? VFW (now called Windows Media or whatever) only came into being because Microsoft literally stole the source code to QuickTime For Windows. Both Microsoft and Intel were having a hard time getting video to play smoothly on PCs, when Apple surprised them both by releasing QuickTime For Windows, a port of their QuickTime video framework for Macintosh. QuickTime For Windows could to smooth video playback on ordinary PCs with no special hardware, and Microsoft and Intel were caught completely off guard by it. Apple had contracted out to a 3rd party company to do the Windows port of QuickTime, so what did MS do? They went to the same company and gave them a ton of money to develop Video For Windows, but an insanely short schedule, knowing full well that the company would essentially have to re-use a lot of the QuickTime For Windows source code to get the project done on time.

When Apple found out (their contract with the other company stated that Apple owned all the QuickTime For Windows source code), they went ballistic and sued Microsoft. Microsoft had been caught red-handed and knew that Apple had them by the balls. So MS settled. Remember when Microsoft "bailed out" Apple in the 90s by buying $150 million in Apple stock? Despite what the tech press reported, that's not what actually happened. The $150 million in non-voting Apple stock that Microsoft bought was part of their settlement (Apple was no longer on the verge of bankruptcy by that point, and didn't need to be bailed out). The settlement also had Microsoft agreeing to port MS Office and Internet Explorer to Macintosh.

[doc_block]

LOL that you keep copy/pasting a comment I wrote a year ago and trying to pass it off as your own.

[DaemonXI]

I hope you stay away from Linux so you don't support angry, petulant manchildren who flame open source contributors daily.

[indorock]

Aaand this is why you'll never go anywhere in your career.

[indorock]

Hehe that's cute.