On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Mark S. Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > Syntax aside, these are both semantic differences with ExplicitSoftFields.
Yes, that's correct. It's certainly not our contention that Names provide an alternative to every use of WeakMaps. WeakMaps are a very useful language feature, not least because it's possible to write library functions like ExplicitSoftFields using them. However, Names serve primarily a different use case - when you want the information-hiding guarantees that lexical scope provides while still programming in a traditional JS style. Names allow economical expression of common OO encapsulation techniques, while maintaing the ES programming model. ExplicitSoftFields intentionally stores data away from the object; Names stores the data with the object. The latter is often much more convenient and easier to reason about. I know that when I've been able to shift programs I've written from using soft fields to using real fields, the gains in code comprehensibility were noticeable. -- sam th [email protected] _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
