Anecdotal evidence via a quick github search <https://github.com/search?l=JavaScript&p=1&q=Math.pow+language%3AJavaScript+extension%3Ajs&ref=advsearch&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93>
A significant number of the usages are unit tests. Many others are repeats from popular libraries like D3. The most extreme use case I could find: y4ashida/ika/blob/master/js/culc_dence.js <https://github.com/y4ashida/ika/blob/master/js/culc_dence.js> On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Steve Fink <sph...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 08/27/2015 09:25 AM, Dean Tribble wrote: > >> Ideally syntax proposals should include some frequency information to >> motivate any change. Is there an easy search to estimate the frequency of >> Math.pow? In my application codebase (financial app with only modest JS >> use), there are very few uses, and there are as many uses of Math.sin as >> there are of Math.pow. >> > > Frequency relative to what, though? If code that does nontrivial math is a > very small proportion of total JS code, and yet the exponentiation operator > makes that code much more readable, then what is the conclusion? I would > argue that ** precedence confusion is irrelevant to code that isn't going > to use Math.pow in the first place. So it's a question of whether ** is a > big enough readability win in code that computes exponents. > > >> Anecdotally, my eyes caught on: "-Math.pow(2,-10*a/1)" (from a charting >> library) which makes me not want to have to review code where I'm worried >> about the precedence of exponentiation. >> >> > I'd have to write that out: -2**(-10*a/1). That doesn't seem too bad. > > For myself, I do very much prefer Math.sqrt(a**2 + b**2) to > Math.sqrt(Math.pow(a, 2) + Math.pow(b, 2)). The verbosity and uneven > density of notation is really bothersome -- for any equation like the > second one, I guarantee that I'll rewrite it on paper to figure out what > it's saying. (Ok, maybe not for that specific formula, but even there I'll > mentally render it.) I would not need to do so with the first one. Jumping > between prefix and infix is jarring. > > Then again, I could make the same argument for Math.sqrt(a**2 + b**2) vs > (a**2 + b**2) ** 0.5. And I don't like the second one much. But people > don't interchange those when handwriting formulas, either. > > Math.sqrt(a.pow(2) + b.pow(2)) is an interesting middle point. I initially > thought it struck the right balance, but seeing it written out, it still > looks far inferior to me. > > A more complex example might help: > > a * (b - a)**(x - 1/2 * (b - a)**2) > > vs > > a * Math.pow(b - a, x - 1/2 * Math.pow(b - a, 2)) > > vs > > a * (b - a).pow(x - 1/2 * (b - a).pow(2)) > > For me, the middle one is a mess. I can't make sense of it, and I can't > spot the common (b - a) expression at all. The first one is as readable as > such formulas ever are when written out with ASCII text. The third one is > somewhere in between. I can see the common (b - a), and perhaps if I got > more used to seeing .pow I could mentally make use of it without writing it > on paper, but for now I cannot. Part of the problem is that I can easily > translate "x**2" into "x squared", but "x.pow(2)" is raising x to the power > of 2. > > > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > es-discuss@mozilla.org > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss >
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