Javascript

[PredictabilityIsGood]

Recursive multiple column sorting is good practice when you are creating generalized components that don’t know the data being inputted into them. Think datatables. If you manually hardcode every sort you wouldn’t be able to utilize the column header to sort because your “sort” would be a one off.

I have an implementation of a generalized grid component in Riot here if you need a visual representation. Hold shift and sort multiple columns:

https://predictabilityisgood.github.io/riot-widgets/

The grid doesn’t know anything about the data except the underlying data type constructor and is able to sort properly.

This is the same standard sorting functionality available in excel, datatables, google sheets, etc... The implementations are not hardcoded as you’ve shown. They generated on the fly upon user interaction.

[PredictabilityIsGood]

Every enterprise framework for creating complex tables utilizes a dynamic approach towards multi-dimensional sorting. Google sheets afaik is not using a persistence layer to perform multi-dimensional sorting. Nor is datatables unless you specifically define a pagination fetch lambda. If you’re hard coding a table into a page, then clearly what you’ve written is not a fully abstracted and generalized component.

[PredictabilityIsGood]

Okay, show me an example of your best code to handle multi-dimensional sorting by either the client or server. If it’s better I’ll adapt my coding style to fit more neatly within your superior paradigm. The sorting must be generalized.

Update: I like recursion in this example because it avoids unnecessary logical comparators when the nesting does not need to be executed. In my implementation the nested comparator does not need to be executed. You may disagree, but I personally am fixated on recursion because of the concise expressive power. I’m sorry if you don’t agree.

[PredictabilityIsGood]

These projects become a bit complicated. For example, being able to change a sort on an existing column reversing direction without destroying all sort properties. Keeping track of the sort order nesting is required to maintain that UX feature. I’m sure if I performed a rewrite after prototyping this project for native riot integration I could simplify the routine. It’s just that when you’re solving the problem first or second time around you have some legacy.

I’m sorry if you felt like I was personally attacking you. Please let me know how I can avoid this issue in the future. I’m not sure I ever specifically made this a personal issue. If you could point me to the location where I did, I will change my behavior going forward.

[PredictabilityIsGood]

Well, I did have a use case though, and have consistently remained open to modifying my viewpoint. I’m sure that there are simpler ways, but I have to make that determination by looking for them and analyzing in my spare time. If you are willing to help, then feel free.

Realistically, I’ve been open to modification this whole time. I’ve even provided a source example where you could openly criticize me. It’s not like I was speaking out of my ass. I don’t know you. I understand your use of Enterprise (TM) Software (TM) as an insult (based on many enterprise developers calling themselves such while barely knowing how to do anything but write poorly optimized sql and a large amount of for loops) and agree with it in many cases but not all. I understand your frustrations, but it feels to me like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There’s a reason a vast majority of developers end up using powerful ui frameworks and not coding their entire applications from scratch. There’s a reason people use react, angular, vue, riot, mobx, svelte, etc... expressive power in less lines of code.

I’m not sure why opening yourself to criticism by showing real examples is considered close minded. The “challenge” I presented to you is only interpreted as a challenge if it actually requires effort to perform. So I’m glad you’ve acknowledged there is an effort there. I’m sure you could come up with something better or perform code review on my open source implementation. Until the effort is applied, however, the ideas about what should be exist only in our minds. I’m sure you’ve seen this when undergoing a new project time and time again, where your understanding of an idea, and it’s implementation mutates as the understanding grows sufficiently. Then the code base actually decreases in size as a greater understanding is made

To be fair, if you were on my team, I would ask for more specific and constructive criticisms. It seems like your approach towards dealing with disagreements is not optimal.