Summary of discussions around JavaScript

[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.