On 05.09.2011 13:26, Andreas Rossberg wrote:
On 4 September 2011 21:45, Brendan Eich <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Sep 6, 2011, at 1:52 PM, Dmitry Soshnikov wrote:
> (1) to standardize `toString` (for this particular case -- do
not remove comments inside);
>
> If the (1) is not possible (why by the way?),
Because comments are not saved in the compilation process and
doing so would slow parsing down and take more space. It's not
obvious this would matter in head-to-head competition with other
browsers (esp. with minified benchmarks) -- we would have to find out.
Switching to source recovery will entrain more space but may be
tolerable -- except that switching to source recovery is work,
competing with other demands. There's no free lunch.
Plus, it breaks all function-based data abstraction if you can
reliably reflect on its implementation and then even reify it through
eval.
In other words, if to rephrase you, you nevertheless are talking about
standardization of `toString`, but to make it some like this, right? :
Function.prototype.toString = function () {
throw "Don't break out abstractions, malicious hacker!"
};
;)
I am indifferent about the general idea of a doc interface,
Then I don't think incorrect judging about the concept of an
"abstraction" is a good topic in this thread (you may open a new one).
Abstraction is about _abstraction_, it's not about "security".
Especially in the interpreted dynamically typed language with embedded
reflection. Abstractions are for programmers. Not for "hackers".
Anyway. It's a completely different story.
but: having to peek at the _implementation_ of something (which is
what toString does) in order to gather its _interface_ description
sounds like a fundamental violation of basic principles and exactly
the wrong way to go about it.
Fundamental principle of an abstraction, once again, is _the
abstraction_. That is, to provide convenient black box with API hiding
implementation details. Thus, nobody says it's about security and that
we can't use things directly if needed. Of course it's a bad practice to
rely on the internal state. But in case of to string it's not even about
application level. It's just a meta-reflection. Yes, achieved via such
way. If it had been implemented at lower level (about what I was talking
about), then we could get it via reflection API, e.g. Function.getDoc(fn).
However, I already mentioned, I already think it makes sense only for
technologies such as Node.js (i.e. with big standard library on which
it's needed often to get quickly help), not ECMAScript at its core.
Dmitry.
_______________________________________________
es-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
