[marrs]

Why does it seem hipster to use a language feature? Is it hipster to use null coalesce as well?

The article linked above explains the reasons to omit semi-colons very well. I would personally prefer if JS forced you to terminate all statements with a semi-colon to avoid any ambiguity, but there you go.

Speaking of ambiguity caused by whitespace, Coffeescript is a 1st degree offender for this. All you have to do is indent the wrong block of code, and you completely change the scope of a nested function, and you have no visual indication of your mistake whatsoever.

[mradmin]

It's hipster because it goes against the accepted standard way of writing Javascript. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1547647&utm_source=twit...

[marrs]

My interpretation of "hipster" is being different because you think it's cool to be different. Being different because you think it's a better approach is called "making progress", either because you'll be proven right or proven wrong.

I've thought about the de-facto standard way a lot and I think that it does nothing to avoid bugs while potentially misleading a coder about the language. Therefore I think it's worse.

The only reason I follow the de-facto standard is because the time spent arguing about it with my peers is better spent getting work done.

[andypants]

Nobody has any good reasons that apply to most people, both for and against semicolons. There really isn't a huge difference in either style except in rare cases.

> The only reason I follow the de-facto standard is because the time spent arguing about it with my peers is better spent getting work done.

Which is why that is an excellent reason. Standards are useful, so if there is one, stick to it. If there is no reason to go against the standard, then don't.

> I think that it does nothing to avoid bugs while potentially misleading a coder about the language. Therefore I think it's worse.

Not seeing any semicolons can also potentially mislead about the language. It is not worse, they are both misleading until you realise ASI exists.

Omitting semicolons also does nothing to avoid bugs, and introduces a different (additional?) set of edge cases where bugs may appear.

[webXL]

Please let us know of one equivalent using semicolons for this semicolon-less bug:

  a = b + c
  (d + e).print()

Which is evaluated as

  a = b + c(d + e).print();

Taken straight out of http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2010/05/semicolons/

> Standards are useful, so if there is one, stick to it. If there is no reason to go against the standard, then don't.

Bingo. I think this is another reason to stick with the standard.

[tlrobinson]

CoffeeScript certainly has its syntax quirks, but after some forced time using it I've found I can't go back to happily writing plain old JavaScript.

The first week or two you'll regularly need to peek at the compiled source to be sure it's doing what you want, but you'll quickly get a feel for it.

Also, a lot of the weird ambiguous cases are disambiguated by including parenthesis, so if you're unsure just include the parens and you should be ok.

[derefr]

Oddly,

> Also, a lot of the weird ambiguous cases are disambiguated by including parenthesis, so if you're unsure just include the parens and you should be ok.

this is exactly the parallel I was going to make to the discussion we're currently having here. People who want semicolons on every line, even when they don't matter, are the same people who want to parenthesize every infix operation, even when the natural precedence the expression has without parentheses is already correct. I'm not sure I understand it in either case--are you afraid that someone might edit the code without understanding the "implicit defaults" of the language's syntax? Why are you letting that person near your codebase?

[lmm]

Some programmers are good at remembering large numbers of arbitrary rules. Others aren't, and I've worked with good and bad programmers of both kinds.

So yes, I'm worried that a colleague might read the code and not know what the precedence is, and they will have to waste their time looking it up (thankfully some IDEs now have an command to add parentheses quickly, but it's still a distraction from their actual task).

Pretty much all languages have some features that are more confusing than helpful, and good codebases avoid using those features (whether via formal policy or not). IMO most precedence rules fall into that category; it would be better if e.g. "a && b || c" were a syntax error until bracketed properly.

[derefr]

Why would they be looking up the precedence?

If the code currently works, then they can read it, and infer that whatever precedence the operators have is the correct one for producing the result the code produces. If "a + b * c" is producing 17 where (a=2,b=3,c=5), then you know that your language makes multiplication precede addition.

If the code doesn't currently work, then they'll have to figure out via some external method (looking up the original formula used in the code, say) what the precedence needs to be, in order to parenthesize to make it work.

On a separate note,

> it would be better if e.g. "a && b || c" were a syntax error until bracketed properly.

this reminds me of the horribly-confusing practice of using "a && b || c" to mean "a ? b : c" in shell-scripting. It almost works, too... unless (a=true,b=false), in which case you unintentionally get the side-effects of c.

[lmm]

>If the code currently works, then they can read it, and infer that whatever precedence the operators have is the correct one for producing the result the code produces. If "a + b * c" is producing 17 where (a=2,b=3,c=5), then you know that your language makes multiplication precede addition.

By that logic why bother using a font in which * and + look like different symbols? Heck, why read the code at all? If the code is working you can infer what it must be doing by observing what comes out when you feed it different inputs.

You read code precisely because you don't know what it does for every input, or don't know how it implements the algorithm; you want to be able to look at a line and see what it does, without having to fire up a repl and run through several examples. I mean, the idea that code should be readable - i.e. that you should be able to tell what a given line of code does without having to run it or look it up - is about as fundamental a good coding principle as it gets.

[derefr]

There is a fundamental difference.

When you read "a + b * c"--and then test your assumption of what it does in a REPL--the result is a learning moment where that knowledge now sticks to you; from then on, you know which of the two operators come first. You only have to do it once.

On the other hand, "using a font in which * and + look like [the same symbol]" means never being able to recognize the pattern, which means never learning anything and having to check every time.

Also,

> the idea that code should be readable - i.e. that you should be able to tell what a given line of code does without having to run it or look it up - is about as fundamental a good coding principle as it gets.

I would agree that that is a good coding principle for low-level C/C++/Java code; in these languages, you can't separate the abstract meaning of code from its implementation, so it's better to just keep the two things together.

But on the other hand, the equivalent coding principle for Lisp is "create a set of macros which form a DSL to perfectly articulate your problem domain--and then specify your solution in that DSL." The equivalent for Haskell is "find a Mathematical domain isomorphic to your problem domain; import a set of new operators which match the known Mathematical syntax of that domain; and then state your problem in terms of that Mathematical domain by using those operators." In either of these cases, nobody can really be expected to just jump in and read the code without looking something, or a lot of somethings, up.

This isn't because the code is "objectively bad", but rather that it has externalized abstractions which in a lower-level language like C would have to be written explicitly into the boilerplate-structure of your code. These are just two different cultures.

[marrs]

But it's the same as the problem with ASI. By making the parens optional you are inviting ambiguity and mistakes.