I realize this is total geek nonsense, but its such a classic I though I'd
pass it on.
It all started with this, 3 months ago:
https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/3057
.. a wonderful bug/feature discussion over ASI (automatic semicolon
insertion) in JavaScript.
The problem was in Twitter code which uses their own "best practices" which
clearly work just fine. But, this led to a failure with JSMin, a
minifier, written
by Doug Crockford. Yes, THAT guy, author of JS, the Good Parts (and the
bad).
Crock, being the JS guru he is, shouted: "That is insanely stupid code. I
am not going to dumb down JSMin for this case".
Let the war begin!
This led to the longest set of comments on github, and a viral explosion on
JS the Good/Bad parts. Doug left the discussion. Both he and the Twitter
author "fixed" their code within 4 days. But the rants went on!
Amazingly, the ball was picked up by a seriously literate guy, ending up
with the first and last chapters of a novel!
http://figment.com/books/308826-Dangerous-Punctuation
.. it captures the FUD perfectly! I do recommend it .. better than the
miles long commentary that started it all.
But wait, there's more! Brenden Eich, creator of JS, was dragged in too.
His summary is here:
http://brendaneich.com/2012/04/the-infernal-semicolon/
.. learned, precise, and sad:
"Most of the comments in this semicolons in JS exchange make me sad."
Who'd'a though!
I guess that's why most of us have moved on to CoffeeScript.
-- Owen
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
