I figured I'd throw an idea out there, now that immutable data is starting
to gain mainstream attention with JS and cowpaths are being paved. I've
recently been playing around with the idea of introducing immutable
collections as value types (as opposed to, say, instances of something).
So at the core there would be three new value types added:
* ImmutableMap.
* ImmutableArray.
* ImmutableSet.
In the spirit of functional programming and simplicity, these types have no
prototype chain (i.e. inherit from null). Instead, all the built-in
functions that deal with these are accessible via respective utility
modules or like with Array and Object, available as static methods of the
constructors. I don't really have a preference in this.
We could also introduce nice syntactic sugar, such as:
var objectKey = {};
var map = {:
[objectKey]: "foo",
"bar": "baz",
}; // ImmutableMap [ [objectKey, "foo"], ["bar", "baz"] ]
var array = [:
1,
1,
2,
3,
]; // ImmutableArray [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ]
var set = <:
1,
2,
3,
>; // ImmutableSet [ 1, 2, 3 ]
Being values, there could be nice syntax for common operations too:
{: foo: "bar" } === {: foo: "bar" } // true
{: foo: "bar", qoo: 1 } + {: qoo: 2, baz: "qooxdoo" } // ImmutableMap [
["foo", "bar"], ["qoo", 2], ["baz", "qooxdoo"] ]
<: 1, 2, 3 > + <: 3, 4, 5 > // ImmutableSet [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]
<: 1, 2, 3 > - <: 2, 4 > // ImmutableSet [ 1, 3 ]
[: 1, 2, 3 ] + [: 3, 4, 5 ] // ImmutableArray [ 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5 ]
"foo" in {: foo: "bar" } // true
"bar of {: foo: "bar" } // true
2 of <: 1, 2, 3 > // true
2 of [: 1, 2, 3 ] // true
var x = {}; x in { [x]: 1 } // true
Having no prototype chain combined with being a value also enables nice
access syntax and errors:
var map = {: foo: "bar" }; set.foo // "bar"
map.foo = "baz"; // TypeError: cannot assign to an immutable value.
The syntax suggestions are up to debate of course, but I think the key
takeaway from this proposal should be that the immutable collection types
would be values and have an empty prototype chain.
I think this would make a worthwhile addition to the language, especially
considering functional compile-to-JS languages. With the syntactic sugar,
it would probably even render a lot of their features irrelevant because
the core of JS could provide a viable platform for functional programming
(of course one might still be happier using abstraction layers that provide
immutable APIs to the underlying platforms, such as DOM, but then that's
not a problem in the JS' domain anymore).
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