On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Bill Frantz <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 12/5/12 at 1:50 AM, [email protected] (Jussi Kalliokoski) > wrote: > > I personally think returning `this` in absence of any meaningful value >> (and >> chaining in general) is a bad pattern. >> > > </lurk> > > I have to agree with Jussi here. Whenever I consider chaining using the > returned values from the various things called, my programming paranoia > hair stands on end. Let me try to explain: > > Whenever I program, I try to trust as little code as possible. With > chaining, there are two possibilities for getting the wrong answer in the > returned value: > > * I or someone else wrote it, but screwed up, > * Someone hostile wrote it and is trying to trip me up. > > If there is a language construct that allows chaining -- like the Pascal > "with" construct -- then I am only trusting the language*, not other > fragments of programs. If I depend on things I call returning the correct > "this", then I am depending on them and my dependency set is a lot larger. > A larger dependency set makes me nervous. > > Cheers - Bill > > * For the really paranoid, minimizing the parts of the language depended > on is important. Not all JS implementations behave the same way in the > corner cases. > Again, I reject the notion that "someone might screw up" is a valid argument for this, or any, discussion. It's one thing to be aware of the potential for misuse, but entirely another to succumb to "fear driven design". Rick
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