Comment by th0ma5

Comment by th0ma5 2 days ago

Reminding me of the near decade of WAT snark where people thought undefined behaviour was a complete proof of the futility of technology when it was actually just people mistaking what technology is. Like it isn't funny that you can't carry water with a brick but for some reason everyone thought JavaScript should be able to accommodate every possible fuckup with a specific error or just fix it. A nice goal but not something to then feel smug about when it doesn't happen but it seemed to be a viral perspective that persisted for way too long.

qsort 2 days ago

People aren't mad that errors aren't fixed automatically, people are mad that the behavior is inconsistent and weird for no fundamental reason other than "that's how the interpreter worked when it all started and it's too late to fix the spec now".

Python is a dynamic language as well and in many ways worse than JS, but

  [] + {}

raises a type error.

In JS

  [] + {}

is an object and

  {} + []

is 0. It's not about being smug, it's that in no way, shape or form that makes any sense.

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Izkata 2 days ago

First, [] + {} isn't an object, it's a string.
Second, {} + [] isn't a type conversion issue, it's a parsing issue. That {} isn't an object, it's a code block. Assign {} to a variable to ensure it's an object, then do var + [] and you get the same result as the first one.
When using an actual object in both of these, the type conversion makes sense: "+" acts on primitives like strings and numbers, so it has to convert them first. You're getting obj.toString() + array.toString() in either case.
I'll admit the parsing issue here is odd, but most of the time peoples' complaints about javascript type coercion is that they simply never bothered to learn how it works.

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- otterley 2 days ago
  
  One can know the intricacies of how something works and still possess a valid opinion that it doesn't work all that well or defies common sense and expectations.
  
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  th0ma5 2 days ago
  
  For me the difference is that you wouldn't then feel compelled to cynically bemoan it for retweets but this schtick went on for years where people would do something out of spec and then complain it was really bizarre to me! Anyway ... Being discouraged by a bug is fine... Making everyone else laugh at the machine on your behalf seems to against understanding and knowledge even if it is fun and funny haha
  
  Reply View | 2 replies
- qsort 2 days ago
  
  The complaint is that type coercion exists at all. It solves no problems and creates several out of thin air.
  Or are you arguing that ceteris paribus you'd rather not have the language throw an error or just propagate undefined?
  
  Reply View | 6 replies
  
  th0ma5 2 days ago
  
  In the context of the time it was created it was fine to mess with and having an enlightened view from the future can't negate that even though I understand the complaint.
  
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- twelve40 a day ago
  
  > peoples' complaints about javascript type coercion is that they simply never bothered to learn how it works
  soo.... if the pesky people keep complaining, maybe it really doesn't make any sense? i for the life of me could never figure out why a bunch of mainstream languages a couple of decades ago decided that typing is no longer necessary and should be abolished. Is there any benefit of removing type checking (and relying on bizarre implicit coercion rules when ambiguity ensues)?
  
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- dcow a day ago
  
  You will never bother me to learn something as convoluted as {} being sometimes parsed as an object and sometimes as a code block.
  
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- [removed] a day ago
  
  [deleted]
  
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- th0ma5 2 days ago
  
  Thanks for posting this. People still don't seem to get that there's no mystery out to make their life difficult and that unfortunately everything can probably ultimately be understood in a deterministic system.
  
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th0ma5 2 days ago

I've read your comment several times and I still don't get how I'm supposed to be frustrated by this?

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fragmede 2 days ago

> the near decade of WAT snark

For today's lucky 10,000:

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat (2012)

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th0ma5 2 days ago

This guy single handedly caused a wave of unproductive cynicism with this stunt. It's like the joke about all the things an everything bagel doesn't have except essentially shitting on the hard work of the entire industry by making up endless nitpicks for laughs.

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- dcow a day ago
  
  Did you even read TFA? Tell me dates make even the faintest sense.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  hnbad 19 hours ago
  
  `Date` is based on the original Java `Date` class and its API was mostly copied verbatim, explaining a lot of the quirks and silliness. While JS can't remove things easily because that would break the web, a lot of work has gone into a set of time primitives that will effectively replace it. `Date`'s parsing logic is so bad even Java has deprecated it.
  This is one of those cases where the problem isn't language design but boardroom politics - Sun wanted JS not to compete with Java so they had to try to make JS more like Java to present JS as a kind of "Java for amateurs".
  
  Reply View | 0 replies