Comment by substack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by substack | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for this. I'm glad that using a single export function will at least be possible. I'm still pessimistic about the amount of syntax being introduced here.

In particular, I still really dislike the special import "local renaming" syntax since it seems so unnecessary compared to just having an import keyword that returns an object and letting the programmer extract and manipulate the relevant entries. You would still get the static analysis benefits of having static imports without all the awkward complexity of the current proposal. Wouldn't it just be the same thing to Object.freeze() the export object but without any syntax magic necessary?

Plus, overloading `module` to do loading AND defining with the `module Bar at "uri"` form seems really wrong. Why can't it JUST do defining and just let import do all the loading?

First, if you want to just use objects-as-prefixes, the way require(...) works in node today, that's easy to do:

    module m at "blah.com";
    ... references to m go here ...

We also want to support other use cases, like binding the exports to names available in your local scope. We understand that not everyone likes that style, but I don't think the language should mandate a particular side in that fight.

Second, the `module m at "URL"` form above is a definition of `m`. It's just that you're allowed to refer to that binding as an object too. Would you rather have:

    module m at "example.com";
    import m;

That just seems like unnecessary typing to me.

I mean why does `module` pull down resources? Shouldn't that be import's job?

There are two reasons:

1. `module` is about defining the modules that you're using in your program, some of which might be remote resources. `import` is about bringing names into scope.

2. Using `module` this way lets you, the client, decide on names for modules, which means we don't have to rely on module authors to come up with and use naming conventions (net.substack.airport, anyone?).

This feeds back into 1, where we use bindings to reference modules, even remote ones.

Also, if a module is never referenced or imported, then the resources shouldn't need to be pulled down at all. So partly it depends on the way you look at things.

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