New private names proposal

[Mark S. Miller]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Kris Kowal <kris.kowal at cixar.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:53 PM, David Herman <dherman at mozilla.com> wrote:
> >
> >    function Point(x, y) {
> >        private x, y;
> >        this.x = x;
> >        this.y = y;
> >        ...
> >    }
> >
> > than
> >
> >    function Point(x, y) {
> >        var _x = gensym(), _y = gensym();
> >        this[_x] = x;
> >        this[_y] = y;
> >    }
>
> I tend to disagree with most developers, so take it with a grain of
> salt that I find the latter form, with all the implied abilities,
> easier to understand.
>

I do too. While terseness clearly contributes to understandability,
regularity and simplicity do too. When these conflict, we should be very
careful about sacrificing regularity.

Currently is JS, x['foo'] and x.foo are precisely identical in all contexts.
This regularity helps understandability. The terseness difference above is
not an adequate reason to sacrifice it.




>
> Kris Kowal
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>



-- 
    Cheers,
    --MarkM
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