weakref proposal update

[Dean Tribble]

This is just a heads up that the WeakRefs *presentation* has been updated
with the improved API and semantics, based on various issues and
discussions from the first version of the proposal.  The new version is
updated in place and is still at:

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-weakrefs/blob/master/specs/Weak%20References%20for%20EcmaScript.pdf

The update for the proposal document itself is still in progress. I will
reply here when it is updated (this week).

Thank you to all the people who posted issues and examples and participated
in those discussions.
___
es-discuss mailing list
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Re: Function composition vs pipeline

[Alexander Jones]

Straw man. The problem is variables named h, f and g, not the use of a
composition operator.

On Sun, 11 Mar 2018 at 07:37, kai zhu  wrote:

> @peter, put yourself in the shoes of a senior-programmer responsible
> for overseeing an entire web-project.  the project is @ the
> integration-stage and you're busy debugging an async
> timeout/near-timeout bug preventing the frontend from talking to the
> backend (which btw, is one of the most common integration/qa
> javascript-bugs).
>
> while trying to figure out what's causing the timeout-issue, you're
> debugging i/o code with operators that look like this:
>
> ```
> const h = ? |> f |> g;
> ```
>
> maybe it is useful for the small-picture sub-problem you were
> originally trying to solve. but now that you're a bigger-fish with
> bigger-picture integration i/o issues, doesn't this look alot like
> technical-debt that no one will have a clue how to debug once a month
> or two has passed?
>
> -kai
>
> On 3/11/18, Peter Jaszkowiak  wrote:
> > Oh please,
> >
> > This is an alternative syntax that's very useful for many people. If you
> > want too simplify syntax yourself you can use a linter to disable
> > alternatives.
> >
> > On Mar 10, 2018 22:56, "kai zhu"  wrote:
> >
> >> my vote is for neither.  exactly what industry painpoint or
> >> problem-space do either of these proposals solve?
> >>
> >> rather, they compound an existing industry painpoint; where
> >> ocd-programmers have problems in deciding-and-choosing which es6
> >> style/design-pattern to employ and stick with before coding even
> >> begins. many of us wish there were less choices, like python (and a
> >> more assertive tc39 that makes clear certain proposals are
> >> productivity-negative and not open for debate) so we could get on with
> >> the actual coding-part.
> >>
> >> from a senior-engineer / technical-manager perspective, it also
> >> doesn't help in managing an entire web-project; comprised of dozens of
> >> sub-components that you didn't all write yourself; and having to
> >> context-switch for each sub-component's quirky es6/es7/es8/es9
> >> style-guide/design-pattern.
> >>
> >> On 3/4/18, Isiah Meadows  wrote:
> >> > Just thought I'd point out that the proposal itself entertains the
> >> > possibility of a corresponding composition proposal [1]. Also, in my
> >> > proposal, one of my "potential expansions" [2] would open a generic
> >> > door for "lifting" over a type, addressing the concern of
> >> > extensibility. (It's not ideal, and I just filed an issue in my repo
> >> > for that, but that's orthogonal.)
> >> >
> >> > [1]: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator#
> >> related-proposals
> >> > [2]:
> >> >
> https://github.com/isiahmeadows/function-composition-proposal#possible-
> >> expansions
> >> >
> >> > -
> >> >
> >> > Isiah Meadows
> >> > m...@isiahmeadows.com
> >> >
> >> > Looking for web consulting? Or a new website?
> >> > Send me an email and we can get started.
> >> > www.isiahmeadows.com
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 5:40 AM, Naveen Chawla  >
> >> > wrote:
> >> >> Although it doesn't allow composition with generator functions like
> >> >> the
> >> >> composition proposal does, otherwise it's a pretty good solution.
> >> >>
> >> >> My only concern with pipeline is that since it offers a different way
> >> >> of
> >> >> calling functions than the `()` syntax, it can lead to mixed and
> hence
> >> >> slightly more confusing code when both `()` and `|>` are used. For
> >> example
> >> >> multi arg and no-arg functions would still use `()`, and single arg
> >> >> functions may or may not use `|>` depending on whether or not they
> may
> >> >> prospectively use a pipeline. The composition operator doesn't
> >> >> supersede
> >> >> the
> >> >> `()` syntax in any context, and so it could be argued it would lead
> to
> >> >> more
> >> >> consistent, more readable code.
> >> >>
> >> >> On Sat, 24 Feb 2018 at 15:02 Peter Jaszkowiak 
> >> wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> I'd like to point out the partial application operator:
> >> >>> https://github.com/tc39/proposal-partial-application
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Sounds like the combination of pipeline + partial application would
> >> >>> result
> >> >>> in what is essentially the same as function composition operator:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> ```
> >> >>> const h = ? |> f |> g;
> >> >>> ```
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Which results in `h` being the composition `g • f`.
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> On Feb 24, 2018 02:21, "Naveen Chawla" 
> wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> That could be a problem for readability.
> >> >>> I agree with the rest of what you said.
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> On Sat, 24 Feb 2018 at 11:16 Viktor Kronvall <
> >> viktor.kronv...@gmail.com>
> >> >>> wrote:
> >> 
> >>  I don’t know the implications but I could easily imagine the
> >>  pipeline
> >>  

Re: Function composition vs pipeline

[Jordan Harband]

All good points :-) I wasn't suggesting there's no cost to adding syntax to
a language; I was suggesting that kai's blanket "please don't add new
syntax because I don't want to have to deal with it in my project" isn't a
useful objection on its own.

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 7:59 AM, Mark Miller  wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 11:33 PM, Jordan Harband  wrote:
>
>> As someone who does wear the shoes of a senior programmer responsible
>> (along with my team) for overseeing a very very large web project, the
>> super trivial and easy answer to this is "use a linter" - eslint can be
>> configured to restrict any syntax you like, and since surely your CI
>> process is already gating any merges, so too can the linter be used to gate
>> merges, which will prevent anyone from any using any syntax you deem
>> unclean.
>>
>> Tons of new syntax can be added to JavaScript forever and it need not
>> have a single bit of impact on any of your project's code except a few
>> lines in your eslint configuration.
>>
>
>
> Hi Jordan, while I agree with some of your overall point, I think this
> goes way too far. The larger the language, and the more diversity there is
> in which subset one shop chooses vs another, the more we loose the benefits
> of having many developers use a common language. No one shop writes all the
> JS they use. They use libraries written by others whose lint rules are
> different. They hire programmers from other shops. They read and post to
> stackOverflow, etc.
>
> Much better is for the language to omit as much as possible, keeping it
> small. I am glad my "Tragedy of the Common Lisp" post is so widely cited
> and appreciated. Later in that thread, at https://esdiscuss.org/
> topic/the-tragedy-of-the-common-lisp-or-why-large-
> languages-explode-was-revive-let-blocks#content-22 I state a hierarchy of
> different parts of a language with different pressures towards minimality:
>
>
> the force of my [minimality] point gets weaker as we move from core
>> language to standardizing libraries. The overall standard language can be
>> seen as consisting of these major parts:
>>
>>- fundamental syntax -- the special forms that cannot faithfully be
>>explained by local expansion to other syntax
>>
>>
>>- semantic state -- the state than computation manipulates
>>
>>
>>- kernel builtins -- built in library providing functionality that,
>>if it were absent, could not be provided instead by user code.
>>
>>
>>- intrinsics -- libraries that semantic state or kernel builtins
>>depend on. For example, with Proxies, one might be able to do Array in 
>> user
>>code. But other kernel builtins already have a dependency on Array
>>specifically, giving it a privileged position over any replacement.
>>
>>
>>- syntactic sugar -- the syntax that can be explained by local
>>expansion to fundamental syntax.
>>
>>
>>- global convenience libraries -- could be implemented by
>>unprivileged user code, but given standard global naming paths in the
>>primordial global namespace.
>>
>>
>>- standard convenient library modules
>>
>> I have listed these in order, according to my sense of the costs of
>> growth and the urgency for minimalism. For all of these we still need to
>> exercise discipline. But it is only for the last one that we should
>> consider growth of absolute size to be unbounded; restricting ourselves
>> only to the rate of growth as we wait for candidates to prove themselves
>> first by the de facto process. Ideally, TC39 should stop being the
>> bottleneck on the last bullet anyway, as external de facto and de jure
>> processes should be perfectly capable of independently arguing about and
>> evolving standard convenience modules.
>
>
>
> Although syntactic sugar is low on the list, it is still costly and best
> avoided when there's no compelling need. "Just use a linter" is not a
> panacea.
>
>
>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 8:26 AM, Terence M. Bandoian 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> In my opinion, one of the more significant advances in the C programming
>>> language was the increase in the maximum length of identifiers.  To me,
>>> this translates to "less cryptic is better".
>>>
>>> -Terence Bandoian
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/11/2018 1:09 AM, Peter Jaszkowiak wrote:
>>>
>>> Personally, I'd push my subordinates to learn this new syntax. But if
>>> you dislike it, you can blacklist it in your linter: it's one of the main
>>> features of a linter.
>>>
>>> On Mar 10, 2018 23:37, "kai zhu"  wrote:
>>>
 @peter, put yourself in the shoes of a senior-programmer responsible
 for overseeing an entire web-project.  the project is @ the
 integration-stage and you're busy debugging an async
 timeout/near-timeout bug preventing the frontend from talking to the
 backend (which btw, is one of the most common integration/qa
 javascript-bugs).

 while trying to figure out 

Re: Function composition vs pipeline

[Mark Miller]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 11:33 PM, Jordan Harband  wrote:

> As someone who does wear the shoes of a senior programmer responsible
> (along with my team) for overseeing a very very large web project, the
> super trivial and easy answer to this is "use a linter" - eslint can be
> configured to restrict any syntax you like, and since surely your CI
> process is already gating any merges, so too can the linter be used to gate
> merges, which will prevent anyone from any using any syntax you deem
> unclean.
>
> Tons of new syntax can be added to JavaScript forever and it need not have
> a single bit of impact on any of your project's code except a few lines in
> your eslint configuration.
>


Hi Jordan, while I agree with some of your overall point, I think this goes
way too far. The larger the language, and the more diversity there is in
which subset one shop chooses vs another, the more we loose the benefits of
having many developers use a common language. No one shop writes all the JS
they use. They use libraries written by others whose lint rules are
different. They hire programmers from other shops. They read and post to
stackOverflow, etc.

Much better is for the language to omit as much as possible, keeping it
small. I am glad my "Tragedy of the Common Lisp" post is so widely cited
and appreciated. Later in that thread, at
https://esdiscuss.org/topic/the-tragedy-of-the-common-lisp-or-why-large-languages-explode-was-revive-let-blocks#content-22
I state a hierarchy of different parts of a language with different
pressures towards minimality:


the force of my [minimality] point gets weaker as we move from core
> language to standardizing libraries. The overall standard language can be
> seen as consisting of these major parts:
>
>- fundamental syntax -- the special forms that cannot faithfully be
>explained by local expansion to other syntax
>
>
>- semantic state -- the state than computation manipulates
>
>
>- kernel builtins -- built in library providing functionality that, if
>it were absent, could not be provided instead by user code.
>
>
>- intrinsics -- libraries that semantic state or kernel builtins
>depend on. For example, with Proxies, one might be able to do Array in user
>code. But other kernel builtins already have a dependency on Array
>specifically, giving it a privileged position over any replacement.
>
>
>- syntactic sugar -- the syntax that can be explained by local
>expansion to fundamental syntax.
>
>
>- global convenience libraries -- could be implemented by unprivileged
>user code, but given standard global naming paths in the primordial global
>namespace.
>
>
>- standard convenient library modules
>
> I have listed these in order, according to my sense of the costs of growth
> and the urgency for minimalism. For all of these we still need to exercise
> discipline. But it is only for the last one that we should consider growth
> of absolute size to be unbounded; restricting ourselves only to the rate of
> growth as we wait for candidates to prove themselves first by the de facto
> process. Ideally, TC39 should stop being the bottleneck on the last bullet
> anyway, as external de facto and de jure processes should be perfectly
> capable of independently arguing about and evolving standard convenience
> modules.



Although syntactic sugar is low on the list, it is still costly and best
avoided when there's no compelling need. "Just use a linter" is not a
panacea.



>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 8:26 AM, Terence M. Bandoian 
> wrote:
>
>> In my opinion, one of the more significant advances in the C programming
>> language was the increase in the maximum length of identifiers.  To me,
>> this translates to "less cryptic is better".
>>
>> -Terence Bandoian
>>
>>
>>
>> On 3/11/2018 1:09 AM, Peter Jaszkowiak wrote:
>>
>> Personally, I'd push my subordinates to learn this new syntax. But if you
>> dislike it, you can blacklist it in your linter: it's one of the main
>> features of a linter.
>>
>> On Mar 10, 2018 23:37, "kai zhu"  wrote:
>>
>>> @peter, put yourself in the shoes of a senior-programmer responsible
>>> for overseeing an entire web-project.  the project is @ the
>>> integration-stage and you're busy debugging an async
>>> timeout/near-timeout bug preventing the frontend from talking to the
>>> backend (which btw, is one of the most common integration/qa
>>> javascript-bugs).
>>>
>>> while trying to figure out what's causing the timeout-issue, you're
>>> debugging i/o code with operators that look like this:
>>>
>>> ```
>>> const h = ? |> f |> g;
>>> ```
>>>
>>> maybe it is useful for the small-picture sub-problem you were
>>> originally trying to solve. but now that you're a bigger-fish with
>>> bigger-picture integration i/o issues, doesn't this look alot like
>>> technical-debt that no one will have a clue how to debug once a month
>>> or two has passed?
>>>
>>> 

Re: Function composition vs pipeline

[Jordan Harband]

As someone who does wear the shoes of a senior programmer responsible
(along with my team) for overseeing a very very large web project, the
super trivial and easy answer to this is "use a linter" - eslint can be
configured to restrict any syntax you like, and since surely your CI
process is already gating any merges, so too can the linter be used to gate
merges, which will prevent anyone from any using any syntax you deem
unclean.

Tons of new syntax can be added to JavaScript forever and it need not have
a single bit of impact on any of your project's code except a few lines in
your eslint configuration.

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 8:26 AM, Terence M. Bandoian 
wrote:

> In my opinion, one of the more significant advances in the C programming
> language was the increase in the maximum length of identifiers.  To me,
> this translates to "less cryptic is better".
>
> -Terence Bandoian
>
>
>
> On 3/11/2018 1:09 AM, Peter Jaszkowiak wrote:
>
> Personally, I'd push my subordinates to learn this new syntax. But if you
> dislike it, you can blacklist it in your linter: it's one of the main
> features of a linter.
>
> On Mar 10, 2018 23:37, "kai zhu"  wrote:
>
>> @peter, put yourself in the shoes of a senior-programmer responsible
>> for overseeing an entire web-project.  the project is @ the
>> integration-stage and you're busy debugging an async
>> timeout/near-timeout bug preventing the frontend from talking to the
>> backend (which btw, is one of the most common integration/qa
>> javascript-bugs).
>>
>> while trying to figure out what's causing the timeout-issue, you're
>> debugging i/o code with operators that look like this:
>>
>> ```
>> const h = ? |> f |> g;
>> ```
>>
>> maybe it is useful for the small-picture sub-problem you were
>> originally trying to solve. but now that you're a bigger-fish with
>> bigger-picture integration i/o issues, doesn't this look alot like
>> technical-debt that no one will have a clue how to debug once a month
>> or two has passed?
>>
>> -kai
>>
>> On 3/11/18, Peter Jaszkowiak  wrote:
>> > Oh please,
>> >
>> > This is an alternative syntax that's very useful for many people. If you
>> > want too simplify syntax yourself you can use a linter to disable
>> > alternatives.
>> >
>> > On Mar 10, 2018 22:56, "kai zhu"  wrote:
>> >
>> >> my vote is for neither.  exactly what industry painpoint or
>> >> problem-space do either of these proposals solve?
>> >>
>> >> rather, they compound an existing industry painpoint; where
>> >> ocd-programmers have problems in deciding-and-choosing which es6
>> >> style/design-pattern to employ and stick with before coding even
>> >> begins. many of us wish there were less choices, like python (and a
>> >> more assertive tc39 that makes clear certain proposals are
>> >> productivity-negative and not open for debate) so we could get on with
>> >> the actual coding-part.
>> >>
>> >> from a senior-engineer / technical-manager perspective, it also
>> >> doesn't help in managing an entire web-project; comprised of dozens of
>> >> sub-components that you didn't all write yourself; and having to
>> >> context-switch for each sub-component's quirky es6/es7/es8/es9
>> >> style-guide/design-pattern.
>> >>
>> >> On 3/4/18, Isiah Meadows  wrote:
>> >> > Just thought I'd point out that the proposal itself entertains the
>> >> > possibility of a corresponding composition proposal [1]. Also, in my
>> >> > proposal, one of my "potential expansions" [2] would open a generic
>> >> > door for "lifting" over a type, addressing the concern of
>> >> > extensibility. (It's not ideal, and I just filed an issue in my repo
>> >> > for that, but that's orthogonal.)
>> >> >
>> >> > [1]: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator#
>> >> related-proposals
>> >> > [2]:
>> >> > https://github.com/isiahmeadows/function-composition-
>> proposal#possible-
>> >> expansions
>> >> >
>> >> > -
>> >> >
>> >> > Isiah Meadows
>> >> > m...@isiahmeadows.com
>> >> >
>> >> > Looking for web consulting? Or a new website?
>> >> > Send me an email and we can get started.
>> >> > www.isiahmeadows.com
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 5:40 AM, Naveen Chawla <
>> naveen.c...@gmail.com>
>> >> > wrote:
>> >> >> Although it doesn't allow composition with generator functions like
>> >> >> the
>> >> >> composition proposal does, otherwise it's a pretty good solution.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> My only concern with pipeline is that since it offers a different
>> way
>> >> >> of
>> >> >> calling functions than the `()` syntax, it can lead to mixed and
>> hence
>> >> >> slightly more confusing code when both `()` and `|>` are used. For
>> >> example
>> >> >> multi arg and no-arg functions would still use `()`, and single arg
>> >> >> functions may or may not use `|>` depending on whether or not they
>> may
>> >> >> prospectively use a pipeline. The composition operator doesn't
>> >> >>