i recently opened an issue https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/5430 concerning require.extensions, and got told that
"People should not be using require.extensions. It's officially deprecated", "Compile your code to JavaScript prior to running it." "There is never any need for additional filetype extensions. Node runs JavaScript"; "we're not bothered with tens of other dialects that require compilation and are written in code that's not readable for JavaScript programmer"; "stop relying on this horrible feature" in no unclear words. i was a little shocked, since my perception has always been that require.extensions was the strike of a genius. with little effort, you can hook in filetypes and make it so that they are require'd transparently, no matter whether they represent data / programs as javascript, json, coffeescript, whatever. ok it's a global hook which, in theory might lead to problems (but in years of writing coffeescript hasn't been a problem even once. i love the fact that i do not have to compile everything in advance / add a buildscript / are forced to keep a coffeescript watch process in the background. coming from python, i was also very happy to see that those pernacious *.pyc files that used to litter my directories were now a thing of the past—i mean, that is code duplication enforced by the system, utterly avoidable. to me, javascript is a wonderful language with some rough edges and a horribly cluttered syntax. now here comes nodejs and all those wonderful home-grown programming languages that take advantage of the great compiling target that javascript running on nodejs is. dumbing down `require` will be sad news for all the many people that are using those new languages daily. as a user of coffeescript, the fact that coffeescript compiles to javascript is a fact that i have to be aware of, but it is not something that i want to be (or need be) constantly reminded of. doing on-the-fly, transparent compilation is the way to go; it has never been any appreciable drain on resources, either. it sure will continue doing things that way. if they kill require.extensions with no sensible replacement, things will just get more difficult. it won't be too difficult to come up with a sensible replacement—one could even predict that sooner or later, there will be modules in npm that will allow you to `require 'old-require'` to replace the new require with the good ole'. gone a bit of efficiency, gone a bit of standardization. so what are the good, the bad and the ugly facts about require.extensions? -- -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
