undefined | Better HN

0 pointsgirvo1y ago0 comments

In fact, Javascript is so complex that one of the seminal books on it was specifically "The Good Parts", cutting down the scope of it to just the parts of the language that were considered decent and useful.

0 comments

6 comments · 1 top-level

Lerc1y ago· 5 in thread

I think the distinction with JavaScript compared to other 'complex' languages is that you don't have to go beyond "The Good Parts" to achieve significant functionality, and it has become idiomatic to use the good subset.

In some respects I think if there were a well defined "Typescript, The Good Parts" I would happily migrate to that.

I do wonder if there will, one day, be a breaking fork of JavaScript that only removes things. Maybe a hypothetical "super strict" might do the job, but I suspect the degree of change might not allow "super strict" code interacting with non "super strict" easily.

BiteCode_dev has provided a pretty good summary of a lot of the issues. A lot of them have easy fixes if you are prepared to make it a breaking change.

demurgos1y ago

ESM is the closest to a major version for JS. It forces strict mode, which includes many non-backwards compatible changes [0]. Most notably, it removes the `with` statement. Other examples of removals are octal literals or assignments to undeclared variables.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

ifwinterco1y ago

Yep, it's going to take time but eventually one day the vast majority of JS code in the wild will be strict mode and the non-strict stuff will be de facto deprecated and not expected to work everywhere

jandrese1y ago

That's certainly true when writing code, but when you are reading code someone else wrote that flies right out the window. This is hardly a unique problem with Javascript, many languages get tagged as "write only" because there is such a large array of available features that you never know which subset someone is going to use. C++ is notorious for this for example.

Izkata1y ago

> BiteCode_dev has provided a pretty good summary of a lot of the issues.

Around half of that list is things added later that were supposed to make the language easier to use.

bryanrasmussen1y ago

after the success of the Good Parts book there were a few other books with the "Good Parts" in the title - like HTML and CSS the Good Parts, and Java: The Good Parts. I seem to remember looking through PHP: the Good Parts and feeling that it was just a learn PHP book, that it did not really differentiate between any core good parts of the language, the parts you should really learn and use.

I sure would like a real "Good Parts" series of books.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse