• Ethan@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      Sure. But in a sane language doing something totally nonsensical like that is an error, and in a statically typed language it’s a compiler error. It doesn’t just silently do weird shit.

        • Ethan@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          9 days ago

          I was trying to make a point without starting a flamewar that was beside the point. Personally I’d never choose a dynamically typed language for a production system. That being said, Python and Ruby complain if you try to add an array, dict/hashmap, string, or number to another (of a different type) so they’re certainly more sane than JavaScript.

    • bahbah23@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 days ago

      I’ve read different defenses for JavaScript for cases like this, which usually runs somewhere from you shouldn’t be doing that anyway all the way up to if you just understood the language better you’d know why. While I agree with both of those points strongly as general principles, JavaScript also violates the principle of least surprise enough to make it concerning.

      For what it’s worth, I do like JavaScript. I really don’t think that there is any perfect programming language.

      • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
        0·
        11 days ago

        I really don’t think that there is any perfect programming language.

        You’d be wrong 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀

      • palordrolap@kbin.run
        0·
        11 days ago

        JavaScript, like some other languages of the time, was designed with the Robustness Principle in mind. Arguably the wrong end of the Robustness Principle, but still.

        That is, it was designed to accept anything that wasn’t a syntax error (if not a few other things besides) and not generate run-time errors unless absolutely necessary. The thinking was that the last thing the user of something written in JavaScript wants is for their browser to crash or lock up because something divided by zero or couldn’t find an object property.

        Also it was originally written in about five minutes by one guy who hadn’t had enough sleep. (I may have misremembered this part, but I get the feeling I’m not too far off.)

        • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          11 days ago

          It was 10 days, but, yeah, not a lot of time, especially for one guy. (That one guy was Brendan Eich, by the way.)

  • Victor@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 days ago

    In node, I get the same result in both cases. "[object Object]"

    It’s calling the toString() method on both of them, which in the array case is the same as calling .join(",") on the array. For an empty array, that results in an empty string added to "[object Object]" at either end in the respective case in the picture.

    Not sure how we’d get 0 though. Anybody know an implementation that does that? Browsers do that maybe? Which way is spec compliant? Number([]) is 0, and I think maybe it’s in the spec that the algorithm for type coercion includes an initial attempt to convert to Number before falling back to toString()? I dunno, this is all off the top of my head.

    • PoolloverNathan@programming.dev
      0·
      11 days ago

      The inspector REPL evaluates as a statement-with-value (like eval), so the {} at the beginning is considered an empty block, not an object. This leaves +[], which is 0. I don’t know what would make Node differ, however.

      Edit: Tested it myself. It seems Node prefers evaluating this as an expression when it can, but explicitly using eval gives the inspector behavior:

      • Victor@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 days ago

        So there’s yet another level of quirkery to this bullshit then, it seems. 😆 Nice digging! 🤝

        I also noticed that if you surround the curlies with parentheses, you get the same again:

        > eval('{} + []')
0
> eval('({}) + []')
'[object Object]'
  • orangeboats@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 days ago

    This is why I try my damnedest not to write in weakly typed languages.

    string + object makes no logical sense, but the language will be like “'no biggie, you probably meant string + string so let’s convert the object to string”! And so all hell breaks loose when the language’s assumption is wrong.

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      Some automatic conversion is fine.

      a=3+0.2

      print(“Hello {name}. You are {age} years old”)

      That kind of thing. But the principle of least surprise definitely applies. If you get to the point where you’re adding two booleans and a string, I feel like the language should at least say something. At least until the technology exists for it to physically reach out of your screen and slap you.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      10 days ago

      You don’t necessarily need types for that kind of thing though, a strict linter that flags that code works just as well

  • Lysergid@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 days ago

    How about SQL in PostgreSql? query: select array_length(Array[]::text[], 1) Output: null

    Dont get me wrong JS is still awful

  • Mesa@programming.dev
    0·
    9 days ago

    I’m in this no-experience-to-apprenticeship program and everyone in my class thinks type coercion is the greatest thing ever.

  • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
    0·
    11 days ago

    It’s best not to touch anything web related, lest you want to go mad. It’s like the elder scrolls or laying eyes on some cosmic horror creature. Tbf this also goes for C++

      • marcos@lemmy.world
        0·
        10 days ago

        I don’t think “easier” is the right way to compare here. The C++ build tools will absolutely rewrite your code into something you can’t expect to guess, but it doesn’t make them hard to “use”.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
      0·
      10 days ago

      It’s not even the coercion that is the problem here. The types are already bad by themselves.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
      0·
      10 days ago

      I take this as less of a “I can’t use this intuitive feature reliably” thing and more of a “the truth table will bite you in the ass when you least expect it and/or make a mistake” thing.

      • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
        0·
        10 days ago

        Just use a formatter. It’ll show you that the second one is two statements:

        1. {} (the empty block)
        2. +[] coerce an empty array to a number: new Number(new Array())
        • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
          0·
          10 days ago

          I totally get that: use the right tools and you’ll be okay. This applies to many technologies in this space.

          With respect, I still take this advice like hearing “look out for rattlesnakes if you’re hiking there.” It might be safer to just hike where there are no rattlesnakes, instead.