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Comment by delluminatus | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. I think that extending and improving a language is good, and it's certainly not a Javascript-only phenomenon.

Off the top of my head, other languages that are considering and implementing syntax extensions include Python (e.g. "yield from"), C# (e.g. "async/await"), and Java (lambda expressions).

I actually think that it's pretty low to accuse ECMAScript of "mangling" JS syntax when they are just trying to add modern extensions that make common patterns easier. Of course this function bind syntax is just a proposal and hasn't been accepted into the standard yet. But what about it bothers you so much? What about iterators or shorter function definitions, are those also nightmarish manglings of syntax? I mean, really. The usage of Javascript is evolving from simple embedded scripts to gigantic client/server applications. It's no surprise that the language itself will evolve as well.

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My objections are around the rate of change and the fact that JavaScript is growing into a large, complex language that people are becoming really uncertain how to use.

I could see how that's a legitimate concern, it reminds me of some of the complaints I hear about C++ having too many features (I don't use C++, so this is just hearsay). But Javascript is still a much smaller and simpler language than almost anything else out there. Sure, it has some semantic quirks, but the syntax is fundamentally minimal. I think it will be a long time yet before we reach the point of being really overcomplicated.

I think the uncertainty around Javascript (and I do agree that there seems to be a real sense of confusion in the community when you look at the explosion of libraries and frameworks) is more related to the fact that we are trying to solve hard problems in a language that really gives us no help. We get no type checking, no good concurrency APIs, no immutability, no good sequence abstractions until iterators, just a fairly low-level and extremely hackable language with an unusual prototypal inheritance system.

Well, who knows. I would personally like to see some more stuff be standardized in the language or the official APIs so we don't end up with four competing libraries implementing "map" and "reduce", or promises, or whatever other thing.

So interesting thought here...but C# might be a better comparison. This is a language that has seen a lot of change and a lot of added features. But at least some of the earlier features that were part of the language are no longer used much. I think js is more like C# than C++ in this way.

JavaScript has always been a language people were uncertain how to use.

The only difference with ES6+ is that the uncertainty will come from the addition of features people have complained were missing, instead of the traditional uncertainty that came from the intersection of its flexibility and dev's desire not to learn it.

No, in fact the real problem has been that too many incompetent people were far too certain about how to use it.

The selling point of JavaScript to me, 12 years ago, was "You don't need to know JavaScript to use JavaScript" and most of the people I saw using it were uncertain of how to actually use it (most of those people also being 13-17 in the crowd of web-design forums I hung around with).

I feel that hasn't changed over the years outside of more and more people not knowing how to use JavaScript (and more and more people who actually know their script).

You are the only person who is really uncertain on it.

You have a point but you mention C#, it's worth thinking of how you'd handle one of the examples in C#:

items .filter(isOk) .map(toOtherType) ::flatten()

In C# that sort of case is primarily handled by extension methods. They have their issues not least in terms of collisions, but to me they are a beautiful solution. The equivalent in JS would seem to be the always unpopular choice of adding these methods to the prototype, and as with extension methods you'd want the user to opt-in to their addition (possibly at object level here?).

Not sure though, maybe I've missed something.

I think extension methods in C# are basically a way to work around the fact that you can't just stick a method on the prototype like you can in Javascript. I also like the C# solution, actually, I just love C#. It's a great "daily driver" language in my book.

If you took the function bind syntax to its natural extreme, you end up with a model like Python or Nim, where all instance methods accept their "this" as a first parameter, and "a.call(b)" is equivalent to "call(a, b)". Personally I always thought that was a particularly elegant way of implementing instance methods, because it doesn't require inheritance or modifying the original type.

In Nim it even lets you do some very interesting method chaining to replace nested calls, like "toInt(sqrt(toFloat(num)))" can be equivalently written "num.toFloat.sqrt.toInt"

Yup agreed but the prototype approach is scarier as it affects every user of the prototype, where as with namespaces you opt-in to bringing in extension methods at the file level by importing the associated namespace.

Not sure on the whole this as argument, I prefer it to the current approach of this being decided at framework/library level because I get bored of having to bind each function to get lexical scoping back. That Nim code is indeed beautiful though, maybe need to give ti a look ta.

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