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:
.. 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!
.. 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:
.. 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
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