Comments on: Getting Closure: Don’t just use it, don’t just abuse it

By: David Mark

David Mark — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:17:13 +0000

Oops. here’s the address.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/browse_thread/thread/e106af2d970d9b29#

By: David Mark

David Mark — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:16:30 +0000

Google Closure is not software as such, but a time capsule of observations by 2005-2006 era browser scripting neophytes. Read this thread as “GoogClosure” serves as a (very) bad example.

The originally cited article misses the mark for sure. It was just scratching the surface, which gives apologists an opening to blither on about “micro-optimizations”. Search the CLJ archive for more reviews of the “logic”. Unfortunate they named the stupid thing after a language feature. ;)

By: Eugene Lazutkin

Eugene Lazutkin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:40:25 +0000

One phenomenon in play here is the “negative Google effect”: everything that comes from Google is declared “revolutionary”, “game changing”, and it will certainly “change our way of life and how we use internet”. This unfortunate hype creates unrealistic expectations, which are predictably followed by a backlash, and people feel almost betrayed when instead of the Tablets of Stone forged by gods or supermen they see a mundane piece of software created by regular software engineers. I think that recently this effect got so bad that it is a formidable negative force for everything unveiled by Google.

The “negative Google effect” paves a way for “I can do much better” crowd, and the bashing begins. Unfortunately all recent criticism of Closure is heavily based on judgment calls and appears like an opportunistic attempt to score some quick “cookie points” with an audience: “look at me saying that Google sucks”. That’s why instead of defect tickets in the Closure’s bug tracker we see empty words aimed at the widest possible audience.

And look at the “evidence”: some code is deemed bad, because it is “suboptimal”, yet no evidence that it is a bottleneck in any real application. Critics never acknowledge that code can be optimized differently: for speed, size, or clarity. And I don’t even talk about higher matters like consistency, design philosophy, and so on. Somehow they think that there is only one true way to do everything. Obviously it is the way they do things.

I hope that all “cookie points” are already earned, the yapping stops now, and time for the serious analysis is finally here. The JavaScript community should understand how Closure can be leveraged, how it can enrich other JavaScript code, and how Closure can be improved. Remember that any living breathing code can be improved. “Perfect” things are in museums, not in the everyday use.

By: dion

dion — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:27:11 +0000

@Joel,

I added a note to clarify this. I think your quotes said this too.

Cheers,

Dion

By: Joel Webber

Joel Webber — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:16:03 +0000

Just to be clear, the above quote is from a Facebook comment, specifically in response to this article:
http://www.boundvariable.com/2009/11/11/closure-drive/

I left a comment on this article that is slightly more circumspect than the one above. The term “javascript native” is one that the author uses, not my own, and I object to the idea that engineers should be considered “natives” of one language, and therefore not of another. By that logic, I would be a TI-BASIC or 6502 assembly native, which is obviously absurd. One’s use of tools should be dictated by one’s goals and the constraints of the problem at hand.

By: Harald Kirschner

Harald Kirschner — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:39:30 +0000

How Peter Higgins was quoted so often these days: “It’s just JavaScript”. I love the tools Closure provides and the extensive documentation, especially inline. It makes it a great resource for people to learn JavaScript and enjoying (mostly) well written code. Even if you don’t use it, it is a great resource for digging the code and getting inspired.

jQuery will never provide a Swiss army knife that Closure is, comparing both makes only sense if you want to rant without bringing up any solid arguments (like Kevin/Dimitri duet).

In the end of the day, I would hire a developer who knows Closure a lot faster than a developer that claims to know JS because he used jQuery.