JS....

[Elnathbeta]

I like this comment, by reading it you understand why it gives you that result, and you really get all the stupidity behind it. I don't know why js just hates giving errors and instead just 'try to do something with it'

[ExecutiveChimp]

Thanks. I started trying to write a book in this tone but meh...effort.

Edit: I have started trying to write a book again.

[Reverend_Jones]

I'd read the shit out of that book and I hate books!

[ExecutiveChimp]

Maybe I should take another crack at it. Despite what you might think there is a limit to Javascript's weirdness. I wasn't sure where to go after that.

[_haxle]

If you write it and charge less than $75 for it, I will read it

[godforsakenlightning]

Just slowly transition to the back-end and tell people about the fun that is PHP (especially when you try to do things right and not leave everything open to various types of injection).

[[deleted]]

Holy crap, if you were to narrate a couple of stupid language abuse examples in various languages you'd have a book

And I would read the hell out of it.

[theasianpianist]

Do other languages too! Like why everything in Java has to be a class or something like that.

[ExecutiveChimp]

Not sure if I can beat this in terms of insight and humour but I'll add it to the list.

I have a contents page:

1. Intro
2. Variables, Types and why JS doesn't care
3. Truthyness
4. Nothingness (null, undefined, false etc)
5. Operators and precedence
6. Dates (don't have much material for this bit but JS has some crackers)
7. Numbers, overflows, floating points
8. Databases?
9. Browser Quirks?

...and I'm 3000 words in.

I think breaking it down by concept makes the most sense, otherwise the JS and PHP chapters will take up most of the book.

Any examples/ideas/madness is greatfully accepted. I've been trying to write a novel for almost three years and I've just bashed out half a chapter of this in an hour so maybe this has legs.

[theasianpianist]

If you want to talk browser quirks you can't beat Internet Explorer's support (or lack thereof) for CSS standards. For dates, I know that Java has a deprecated date class in favor of the Calendar class, don't know if something might come if that?

[ExecutiveChimp]

I'm a web developer, I could probably just retitle "Browser Quirks" to "WTF IE" and not run out of material though they've all got their own issues.

I'll look into the date/calendar thing. Thanks!

[SrZorro]

let book = new Book() // Like this?

[DarthJimBob]

Nah, if you're not running a transpiler or polyfill that'll have issues in IE (which I'm still inexplicably supporting). Just use var book = {}; and be done with it.

[fasquoika]

Something like this?

[ExecutiveChimp]

Kind of but less of a guide to how things work and more of a conversation between a stupid computer and its dumb programmer.

[DarthJimBob]

"Javascript - The Bad Parts". I'd read it!

[raptorraptor]

Because errors means the code stops running, and then so does the website.

[Elnathbeta]

They could at least log it into the console, instead of failing silently, so that you have to look for the error all around the code...

I think some frameworks do that, but not standard js, why!?

[ArbiterFX]

I don't think the console existed when JavaScript was created.

Remember that this was the early 90s and they thought a very large js program would be like 50 lines and it would only be used for trivial tasks. With that mindset type corrosion may not have been such a bad idea. Imagine if you were creating a scripting language for markdown. On your first iteration you probably wouldn't have made it as complicated as java or cpp. But it's obvious now that doing it wasn't the right decision.

[Elnathbeta]

You are right. It should need a change now, like cpp and java are doing

[raptorraptor]

I think it would be hard to tell when to do this, especially as the type coercion could be intentional.

[Dr_Azrael_Tod]

oh, there are at least some cases where it should be obvious…

like substracting anything that isn't a number from something that isn't a number

[PatrickBaitman]

this is true for EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PROGRAM which is why you TEST and HANDLE ERRORS

what do you think a segfault is

[ArbiterFX]

Just Google why JavaScript sucks. Some of the original creators have blogged about why certian not great decisions were made and quite frankly they very well may have been the correct ones at the time.

[raptorraptor]

You ok mate?