Mixing grammars
Sorry, but your message looks very opinionated and I can't seem to find any objective reasoning in there. Would you be willing to discuss what exactly you consider the repercussions to be?
Many functional languages allow function chaining, some even with a similar
syntax. F# features pipe operators as well (in fact, it even features a
literal |> operator), and Haskell has . and >>>.
ECMAScript has many functional parts. So why not offer better support for FP?
Sorry, but your message looks very opinionated and I can't seem to find any
objective reasoning in there.
Nah, you might be thrown off by the different grammar ;)
Ok.
Thing is, |> would introduce a new way of calling a function in a
way that is not at all in line with how functions are called in JS.
That means JS devs won't easily recognize a |> b as easily as they
do b(a). (Also consider less text-book-y examples here please...)
You might argue that this will be a transitional period and I will counter you with an existential question; Why at all? What does this solve? And is it worth the cognitive overhead?
I think this is a bad addition to the language. One that doesn't "fit" with how the language currently works. And one that will lead to many devs being thoroughly confused when confronted with this.
But, I'm not asking you to take my opinion on it. Research it. Please do some research on this. Reach out to devs of all types (not just react devs, not just functional programmers, not just vanilla JS coders, not just code golfers, and definitely not just people on the TC39) and figure out how they will respond when confronted with additions like this. And please post those results here. I don't mind being wrong. As long as you can back those claims up when introducing something like this.
Ah, I see where you're coming from now. Thanks for the clarification!
There has recently been some discussion about the semantics of |> in [1].
I think what you're looking for is [2], perhaps?
[1] tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator#50 [2] TheNavigateur/proposal
In case anyone is reading this on esdiscuss.org, the 2nd link gets broken when posting it. It's this one (edited on esdiscuss.org):
TheNavigateur/proposal-pipeline-operator-for-function-composition
i tend to agree with peter that function-composition and pipe-operators are likely footguns that don't solve anything new, and that you should be careful what you wish for.
like es6, its all fun when you're writing your own code, but not so much when you "inherit" someone else's orphaned web-project (which seems to be happening alot in industry lately), and it reads more like perl than javascript.
we should be consolidating javascript grammar and design-patterns instead of fragmenting it further, so that everyone's code can be more readable to everyone else.
If operators are in JS, then code using them reads like JS by definition.
If operators are in JS, then code using them reads like JS by definition.
we can agree to disagree. more people like me might look at es9/10 code that may have this feature and think "this looks nothing like javascript" anymore, and then join es-discuss to complain about having to debug other people's unreadable code like i do.
On Sep 6, 2017 06:40, "Jordan Harband" <ljharb at gmail.com> wrote:
If operators are in JS, then code using them reads like JS by definition.
On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 4:38 PM, kai zhu <kaizhu256 at gmail.com> wrote:
i tend to agree with peter that function-composition and pipe-operators
are likely footguns that don't solve anything new, and that you should be careful what you wish for.
like es6, its all fun when you're writing your own code, but not so much
when you "inherit" someone else's orphaned web-project (which seems to be happening alot in industry lately), and it reads more like perl than javascript.
we should be consolidating javascript grammar and design-patterns
instead of fragmenting it further, so that everyone's code can be more readable to everyone else.
On Sep 4, 2017 21:59, "Naveen Chawla" <naveen.chwl at gmail.com> wrote:
In case anyone is reading this on esdiscuss.org, the 2nd link gets
broken when posting it. It's this one (edited on esdiscuss.org):
TheNavigateur/proposal-pipeline-operator-for-function-composition
On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 at 17:36 kdex <kdex at kdex.de> wrote:
Ah, I see where you're coming from now. Thanks for the clarification!
There has recently been some discussion about the semantics of
|>in [1].I think what you're looking for is [2], perhaps?
TheNavigateur/proposal-pipeline-operator-for-function-composition
On Friday, September 1, 2017 1:52:31 PM CEST Peter van der Zee wrote:
Sorry, but your message looks very opinionated and I can't seem to
find
any
objective reasoning in there.
Nah, you might be thrown off by the different grammar ;)
Ok.
Thing is,
|>would introduce a new way of calling a function in a way that is not at all in line with how functions are called in JS. That means JS devs won't easily recognizea |> bas easily as they dob(a). (Also consider less text-book-y examples here please...)You might argue that this will be a transitional period and I will counter you with an existential question; Why at all? What does this solve? And is it worth the cognitive overhead?
I think this is a bad addition to the language. One that doesn't "fit"
Quoting kai zhu: "more people like me might look at es9/10 code that may have this feature and think "this looks nothing like javascript" anymore, and then join es-discuss to complain about having to debug other people's unreadable code like i do."
Maybe they should read up the manuals / tutorials on the internet instead? And then if it is still unclear they may ask on stack overflow. I also stumbled over constructs I did not know in the past, but thats a normal learning process. E.g. I remember, years ago in the beginning of "my JS carreer", coming from C, I first stumbled over constructs like this one (over-simplified, of course):
const X = ((A,B)=>{return A+B;})(A,B);
Well I wasn't aware of unnamed functions being called directly. But I found out about it. Now I am glad having it.
Kai, I see you often trying to block new inventions with the argument, that other people will not understand it. But finally it's the decision of the developer or company guidelines of a company whether to use a feature or not. And when someone wants to modify someone elses code, he must be willing to learn whatever constructs the other one found being handy, or, in case he does not like that, write his own variant which does not use that construct. And in case the code they try to debug is unreadable for you, you should consider learning or contact the author and ask him for clarification or complain there. But after all you are an engineer and a good engineer does not complain about others just because he does not want to or is not able to improve his skills. Please don't feel insulted by that statement.
Example: I personally do not like the syntax (A,B)=>A+B - instead I
prefer writing (A,B)=>{return A+B;}, because it is more explicit and
with the braces I see more easily on where the function body really ends
- in case it is embedded somewhere. So I do not use it. My colleague likes it and uses it - I do not punish him for that, I just asked him not to use it when he contributes to my work. We are both fine with that. And I definitely do not complain on es-discuss about that syntax having been introduced...
By the way: I probably will not use the pipe syntax suggested in the referred proposal ATM but I will for sure accept other people doing so and may also start using it when I see a benefit for my work.
Kai, I see you often trying to block new inventions with the argument,
that other people will not understand it.
no insult taken. to me, its a valid argument, and one that i'm not ashamed to use over and over and over again, nor should anyone else who feels like me the language-spec is mature, and prefer something with minimal sugar, like es5 was.
On Sep 6, 2017 11:20, "Michael Kriegel" <michael.kriegel at actifsource.com>
wrote:
Quoting kai zhu: "more people like me might look at es9/10 code that may
have this feature and think "this looks nothing like javascript" anymore, and then join es-discuss to complain about having to debug other people's unreadable code like i do."
Maybe they should read up the manuals / tutorials on the internet
instead? And then if it is still unclear they may ask on stack overflow. I also stumbled over constructs I did not know in the past, but thats a normal learning process. E.g. I remember, years ago in the beginning of "my JS carreer", coming from C, I first stumbled over constructs like this one (over-simplified, of course):
const X = ((A,B)=>{return A+B;})(A,B);
Well I wasn't aware of unnamed functions being called directly. But I
found out about it. Now I am glad having it.
Kai, I see you often trying to block new inventions with the argument,
that other people will not understand it. But finally it's the decision of the developer or company guidelines of a company whether to use a feature or not. And when someone wants to modify someone elses code, he must be willing to learn whatever constructs the other one found being handy, or, in case he does not like that, write his own variant which does not use that construct. And in case the code they try to debug is unreadable for you, you should consider learning or contact the author and ask him for clarification or complain there. But after all you are an engineer and a good engineer does not complain about others just because he does not want to or is not able to improve his skills. Please don't feel insulted by that statement.
Example: I personally do not like the syntax (A,B)=>A+B - instead I
prefer writing (A,B)=>{return A+B;}, because it is more explicit and with
the braces I see more easily on where the function body really ends - in case it is embedded somewhere. So I do not use it. My colleague likes it and uses it - I do not punish him for that, I just asked him not to use it when he contributes to my work. We are both fine with that. And I definitely do not complain on es-discuss about that syntax having been introduced...
By the way: I probably will not use the pipe syntax suggested in the
referred proposal ATM but I will for sure accept other people doing so and may also start using it when I see a benefit for my work.
On 06.09.2017 01:56, kai zhu wrote:
If operators are in JS, then code using them reads like JS by
definition.
we can agree to disagree. more people like me might look at es9/10 code
that may have this feature and think "this looks nothing like javascript" anymore, and then join es-discuss to complain about having to debug other people's unreadable code like i do.
On Sep 6, 2017 06:40, "Jordan Harband" <ljharb at gmail.com> wrote:
If operators are in JS, then code using them reads like JS by
definition.
On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 4:38 PM, kai zhu <kaizhu256 at gmail.com> wrote:
i tend to agree with peter that function-composition and
pipe-operators are likely footguns that don't solve anything new, and that you should be careful what you wish for.
like es6, its all fun when you're writing your own code, but not so
much when you "inherit" someone else's orphaned web-project (which seems to be happening alot in industry lately), and it reads more like perl than javascript.
we should be consolidating javascript grammar and design-patterns
instead of fragmenting it further, so that everyone's code can be more readable to everyone else.
On Sep 4, 2017 21:59, "Naveen Chawla" <naveen.chwl at gmail.com> wrote:
In case anyone is reading this on esdiscuss.org, the 2nd link gets
broken when posting it. It's this one (edited on esdiscuss.org):
TheNavigateur/proposal-pipeline-operator-for-function-composition
On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 at 17:36 kdex <kdex at kdex.de> wrote:
Ah, I see where you're coming from now. Thanks for the
clarification!
There has recently been some discussion about the semantics of
|>
in [1].
I think what you're looking for is [2], perhaps?
TheNavigateur/proposal-pipeline-operator-for-function-composition
On Friday, September 1, 2017 1:52:31 PM CEST Peter van der Zee
wrote:
Sorry, but your message looks very opinionated and I can't seem
to find
any
objective reasoning in there.
Nah, you might be thrown off by the different grammar ;)
Ok.
Thing is,
|>would introduce a new way of calling a function in
a
way that is not at all in line with how functions are called in
JS.
That means JS devs won't easily recognize
a |> bas easily as
they
do
b(a). (Also consider less text-book-y examples here
please...)
You might argue that this will be a transitional period and I will counter you with an existential question; Why at all? What does
this
solve? And is it worth the cognitive overhead?
I think this is a bad addition to the language. One that doesn't "fit"
with how the language currently works. And one that will lead to
many
devs being thoroughly confused when confronted with this.
But, I'm not asking you to take my opinion on it. Research it.
Please
do some research on this. Reach out to devs of all types (not just react devs, not just functional programmers, not just vanilla JS coders, not just code golfers, and definitely not just people on
the
TC39) and figure out how they will respond when confronted with additions like this. And please post those results here. I don't
mind
being wrong. As long as you can back those claims up when
introducing
something like this.
- peter_______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list es-discuss at mozilla.org, mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
es-discuss mailing list es-discuss at mozilla.org, mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
es-discuss mailing list es-discuss at mozilla.org, mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
_______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list
es-discuss at mozilla.org, mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
-- Michael Kriegel • Head of R&D • Actifsource AG • Haldenstrasse 1 •
CH-6340 Baar • www.actifsource.com • +41 56 250 40 02
You can continue using ES5 forever; there's no need to obstruct the progress of the language just because it's evolving to have features you never intend to use.
I tend to agree with peter that function-composition and pipe-operators are likely footguns that don't solve anything new, and that you should be careful what you wish for.
I would like to give my opinion about how the |> operator solves something new. It’s not the function composition, which is a nice bonus, but mostly already possible with a custom function. It’s function chaining.
In the current state of ES, IMO, function chaining is not possible in a maintainable way. I mean without wrapping/unwrapping objects or multilines parentheses blocks, or worse. The |> operator (or, if it is abandoned, I’ll put my hopes on the binding operator) allows function chaining.
The benefits I see from function chaining (and so from the |> operator):
- Better use of iterables, and probably also streams or observables or promises
- More interoperability of libraries
- More opportunities for developers to solve problems
Let me give some examples of what we may see with function chaining:
import _ from 'lodash-for-chaining';
import $ from 'jquery-for-chaining';
import BB from 'bluebird-for-chaining';
import W from 'whenjs-for-chaining';
const toArray = iterable => [...iterable];
new Set([1,2,3,4,5]).entries()
|> _.filter(x=>x%2)
|> _.map(x=>x+1)
|> toArray
|> console.log;
document.querySelectorAll('a')
|> $.show
|> $.css('width', '100%');
// iteroperability
Promise.resolve([1,2,3])
|> W.spread((a,b,c) => a+b+c)
|> BB.finally(() => console.log('finally'));
// personnal expectations, give developers the oportunity to solve
// cancellation without waiting another ES feature
fetch(url, {cancelToken: cancellableOperation.token})
|> cancellableOperation.then(res => res.json())
|> cancellableOperation.then(res => console.log(res.id));
And I don’t think these examples are using a very different paradigm than all the ES code written so far, or would be that difficult to apprehend for new developers.
On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 10:44 AM, Jérémy Judéaux <jeremy.judeaux at volune.net> wrote:
import _ from 'lodash-for-chaining';
import $ from 'jquery-for-chaining';
import BB from 'bluebird-for-chaining';
import W from 'whenjs-for-chaining';
const toArray = iterable => [...iterable];
new Set([1,2,3,4,5]).entries()
|> _.filter(x=>x%2)
|> _.map(x=>x+1)
|> toArray
|> console.log;
document.querySelectorAll('a')
|> $.show
|> $.css('width', '100%');
// iteroperability
Promise.resolve([1,2,3])
|> W.spread((a,b,c) => a+b+c)
|> BB.finally(() => console.log('finally'));
// personnal expectations, give developers the oportunity to solve
// cancellation without waiting another ES feature
fetch(url, {cancelToken: cancellableOperation.token})
|> cancellableOperation.then(res => res.json())
|> cancellableOperation.then(res => console.log(res.id));
These are nice examples. Is there a side-by-side comparison of the equivalent code without function chaining? For example, unless I've mistranslated:
new Set([1,2,3,4,5]).entries() |> _.filter(x=>x%2) |> _.map(x=>x+1) |> toArray |> console.log;
vs
console.log( toArray( new Set([1,2,3,4,5]).entries() .filter(x=>x%2) .map(x=>x+1)));
I ask because I don't understand how pipelining makes operations easier. The proposal says "and provides a practical alternative to extending built-in prototypes" which seems like a nice thing to avoid but I'm not clear on how that happens.
It seems to maybe enable more literate programming. "We take the widget, bedazzle it, and put it on the fridge" can be directly translated to widget |> bedazzle |> fridge
but fridge(bedazzle(widget)) maps to English "The fridge gets a bedazzled widget." Maybe we should prefer the former since it introduce terms in the order they're operated upon. Is that part of the appeal?
I see tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator/wiki/Example-Use-Cases which has some use cases, but some of those are a stretch, and they don't seem to relate to avoiding extending built-in prototypes since the Before code doesn't seem to require extensions.
For example,
""" Usage with const
// Before let items = base64ToJSON(response.data.content) items = Array.isArray(items) ? items : [items]
// After const items = base64ToJSON(response.data.content) |> x => Array.isArray(x) ? x : [x] """
shows code that nicely avoids a reassignment, but the unpipelined
const items = (x => Array.isArray(x) ? x : [x])(
base64ToJSON(response.data.content))
also avoids reassignment without pipelining.
I want quickly a point to make. I have a while ago of the, well, I know actually not how that thing is called, but the "|> operator"
heard. I ignored it as "funny but a very different paradigm than JS".
Now see I today a tweet pass by that somebody a draft of a propasal has created [1] to this really to JS to add.
I think that it a bad idea is and hope really that the TC39 first a good research does to the desirability and repercussions of the adding of similar syntax to the language.
For me is it just like you the Dutch grammar apply on the English. Like this message tries to show. You.
1; tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator#52
===
(Dutch)
Ik wil even een punt maken. Ik heb een tijdje geleden van de, tja, ik weet eigenlijk niet hoe dat ding heet, maar de "|> operator" gehoord.
Ik deed het af als "grappig maar een heel ander paradigma dan JS".
Nou zag ik vandaag een tweet voorbij komen dat iemand een draft van een proposal heeft opgesteld [1] om dit daadwerkelijk aan JS toe te voegen.
Ik denk dat het een slecht idee is en hoop echt dat de TC39 eerst een goed onderzoek doet naar de wenselijkheid en gevolgen van het toevoegen van dergelijke syntax aan de taal.
Voor mij is het net alsof je de Nederlandse grammatica toepast op het Engels. Zoals dit bericht probeert aan te tonen.
1; tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator#52