But, JSConf has just 150-200 JavaScript developers in attendance.
Right. The JS community has no borders, no government, no constitution, no
membership cards, no census... We welcome everyone. So we have no way of
instituting democratic institutions.
they are definitely not a representative sampling of the overall
community. Making language decisions based on the vocal support of JSConf
alone is not sufficient.
I can only repeat what I said before. There's no magic way to figure out
accurately what most people want. The best we can do is publicize, solicit
feedback, discuss, and make a decision. As we have always done.
OK, it's fair to point out that an attempt is being made. I'm asking though
for the resulting evidence from that attempt. As far as I can tell (and
please correct me if I'm wrong), there's been a few discussions on some
rather-esoteric lists/threads, like es-discuss, a few strawmans, and some ad
hoc presentations as JSConf. If there's a signficant medium of exchange of
opinions and ideas about topics that I'm NOT listing there, please do tell
me. I like to think I keep on the pulse of the JS community (generally
speaking), and so I'm anxious to hear if and how I'm missing out.
If OTOH those few mediums do constitute the breadth of "community opinion
solicitation" thus far regarding specifically the matters of these
coffeescript shorthands, as I was previously inclined to believe, then my
original assertion stands, that this doesn't constitute, in my opinion,
enough of the broader perspectives on what is and is not useful and readable
JavaScript. With all due respect, Brendan's personal tastes on what kind of
code he likes to write is not enough. It has to be something that is likely
to find wide spread support among the JavaScript masses.
And if we're looking for any kind of guide as to what they might like
(because we cannot scientifically poll all of them, obviously), then might I
suggest that the community that's grown up around jQuery (and its associated
projects, plugin ecosystem, etc) is a place to start. I am not in any way
suggesting jQuery is the only style of code out there, by any means. But it
clearly represents a wide swath of how JavaScript developers are currently
using the language. And jQuery is unique enough in its syntactic
eccentricities (its chaining, etc) that it may offer some insights.
To the extent that jQuery syntax encourages people to take shortcuts, it
could be seen as support for shorter syntax. And to the extent that jQuery
uses lots of anonymous functions, it could be seen as an opportunity to
shorten all that "function" soup.
But, by the same token, jQuery preserves verbosity in some places for
readability sake. For instance, event names are known by their full
canonical names, rather than by some shorthand (similarly with attribute and
property names). I can say as many times as I write `click(...)` or
`bind("click"...)`, I could see where `c` or `clk` might be nice to have, to
save on all that typing. But, it would probably be for a loss of readability
and semantics of the code.
So there has to be a careful balance struck between shortness and
readability. I think at least a few of us are saying that we're skeptical
that -> is sufficiently readable and semantic, compared to function(){} or
#(){}. The same goes for the loss of `return`... Having `return` in there is
a good thing, I think, because it makes it clear what's being returned. I
often write complex functions with internal branching logic, where there's
more than one `return` statement, and so it scares me to think how I could
inspect and understand such code as readily/easily if the `return` was
implicit, for instance, only the last evaluated expression, etc.
I was merely responding to Andrew's insinuation that the majority of the
community (including him) had already voiced support for ->.
You have no way of knowing Andrew was insinuating that. I saw only the
eminently reasonable point that we will never be able to please everyone,
and will have to *try* to please as many people as possible.
Andrew's original message (in part):
I'd want the committee to listen to all interested parties and try to pick
the solution that pleases the most people. That appears to be what's
happening here.
The phrase "That appears to be what's happening here", following after the
"committee...listen...pick" sentence before, led me to believe that Andrew
was indicating that the movement to adopt Coffeescript-like shorthand was a
result of the committee *having already listened* and *having already
picked* a solution that most people agreed with. It was the implication of
"this has already been happening" I reacted to. If I misread it, I
apologize. But my interpretation was fueled strongly by half a dozen blog
posts and dozens of tweets from JSConf and post-JSConf which seemed to
suggest that this stuff was already basically a done-deal.
I take issue with the assertion that shorter==better unequivocally.
I don't know whether anyone actually made that assertion.
From Brendan earlier in the thread:
This is shorthand, and only shorthand. And usability counts, so shorthands
are in Harmony (e.g., destructuring)
I interpreted that as a pretty definitive "this is a done deal" type of
statement, similar to the tone I interpreted from Andrew's statement, as
described above. Again, if I read too far, I apologize, but these are
exactly the phrases and interpretations which causes me to jump into this
thread.
You're reading into perceived "tone" and "insinuation" (your words) things
that are directly contradicted by verifiable facts.
I apologize if that's the case. But it sure sounded like it was a decided
issue (more or less) that Coffeescript shorthands, or something like it,
would be showing up in a browser near me pretty quickly. I understand that
Brendan can make such changes in Firefox (I am a Mozilla employee) rather
quickly ahead of final spec standardizations, and this is probably what he's
planning (or already) done.
But optimistically putting in a set of shorthands (which some
forward-thinking devs will immediately start writing against -- especially
mozilla employees working on Firefox itself) so far in advance of when it's
really had a chance to settle out in the community and let the community
"vote" (by virtue of use or non-use) on various syntax changes... that
carries with it some risk of the tail-wagging-the-dog effect.
So I felt like it was important to voice "early" that not everyone feels
universally so lovey-dovey over that syntax. In fact, a recent tweet I read
sums up my feelings: "If I wanted to be using Coffeescript, I'd be using
Coffeescript. I prefer JavaScript."
If you want to contribute productively, please assume good faith on the
part of your interlocutors. I think you'll find the assumption holds up.
I don't think this is a situation of not assuming good faith. If I thought
this list acted in bad faith, I wouldn't waste my time here.
I think it's a question of reading (perhaps too far) in between the lines to
interpolate that a larger (and more fast moving) trend was occurring than
seemed to be being explicitly disclosed. Again, given all the buzz that came
out this week after JSConf, to then see this thread and some phrases which
were suggestive of "it's a done deal", I wondered to myself if there'd been
some sort of community defining moment at JSConf that I (and millions of
other devs) had just missed the boat on.
I apologize for my overreactions. And I renew my call that there should be
more direct solicitation of feedback from the greater community, rather than
taking what the few of us here on these lists have to say as sufficient.
--Kyle
_______________________________________________
es-discuss mailing list
es-discuss@mozilla.org
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
