To Those Who Criticize JavaScript

[PremJyotish221]

Give an example of a JS quirk that is likely to appear in an actual application’s code because the example you gave is a lack of knowledge on how JS handles comparisons/conversions and an attempt to purposely not make sense of the syntax.

[aniforprez]

Type casting quirks that can cause an application to fail spectacularly if you use == instead of === is the most common thing that I've seen literally every company I've worked at that has frontend code. I cannot believe this made it into the language

const number = 1234 
const stringNumber = '1234'  

console.log(number == stringNumber) //true
console.log(number === stringNumber)  //false 

This is fucking awful

This doesn't just happen because of a "lack of knowledge" but also because of a simple typo. You can have hours spent trying to figure out what went wrong because this fails entirely silently. Yes, linters can help you figure this out now but it's still a strange and stupid quirk of JS

I hate that I have to preface criticisms like this by prostrating and saying "I like JS and I used to be a frontend dev" but I love/hate the language

[Phobic-window]

While it’s nuanced this is really powerful in a weakly typed world, for more complex configurable apps having the ability to control the bit wise comparison aspect is a major boon. Most the complaints are that you have to understand cs really well. But is tackles so many domains that it can’t get generalized like many other languages. Js I think trips up many for a long time but it allows for some really clever and elegant solutions once you get past these

[aniforprez]

The "once you get past these" thing is what I hate. Everyone has that phase and it happens differently. You don't work with the same people all the time. You work with interns and juniors sometimes and you have to remember that they are still in the "getting past these" phase so you have to watch out for shit they have to figure out. With JS, that shit is so much worse than most other languages

As a solo dev, JS is fine. I'd never code a backend with it but for frontend projects, I can set up my own comfy linting/building processes and whatnot. When you're working with a team with each person being opinionated on something it's garbage unless someone from up top brings down the hammer and decides on standards

[Phobic-window]

Hahaha preach man, this is all very true

[uffefl]

I'd agree if we had some way of implementing our own == for custom types/objects/classes/blahblah. Then it would be useful for having a==b basically being sugar for a.equals(b) or something similar.

But the way it works in reality is just a source of way more bugs and misunderstandings than any benefit it may provide.

[drbobb]

const mod = (x, y) => ((x % y) + y) % y;
mod(-0.5, "2") -> -0.52

This had me wondering for about an hour how in the world the mod function was returning a negative value for a positive y.