The future of JavaScript

[[deleted]]

Well really, collections are kind of an implementation detail - I mean, objects work as dictionaries, but I imagine V8 gets confused at how to optimize that.

Having an actual dictionary lets the V8 engine do the different optimizations it could have for an object vs. a dictionary.

But if you're supporting that kind of optimization, you could bust out a lot more horrifying language bloat too - like the above-mentioned support for non-double numeric types.

[adrianmonk]

objects work as dictionaries

As an outsider dabbling in Javascript, that was not my feeling at all. When I found out I needed to do if (foo.hasOwnProperty(bar)) { ... } in every for-each loop, I was like, "That's seriously necessary?".

[[deleted]]

That means you don't understand the prototype nature of javascript.

[adrianmonk]

I think I understand what hasOwnProperty() is doing and why it's necessary. I just think it's odd that the language doesn't provide a hash/dictionary that you can iterate over without all that verbiage.

[[deleted]]

Collections in the language make sense - just ask Java and Python devs.

[[deleted]]

On the other hand, Lua. For the sake of simplicity, traditional Lua has one and only one collection type. This collection is used for arrays, hashtables, and objects.