TIL about the greek question mark

Tell me, can you tell the difference between these two characters?

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  • Andrew
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    511 months ago

    It is recommended. But in TS it is not necessary with rare exceptions.

    • Platypus
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      11 months ago

      That’s what’s really irks me be about JS–you can do just about whatever but you’re not supposed to.

      It’s an imperative language, but best practices are to use it functionally.

      You can omit semicolons, but best practices are to use them.

      You can use sloppy equality, but best practices are to always use strict.

      • @TopRamenBinLaden
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        1811 months ago

        JavaScript reminds me of an older brother who happens to be the most laid back stoner you could meet. “Like yea man, you should probably use semicolons, but I ain’t gonna narc”

      • @[email protected]
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        911 months ago

        After switching to typescript with linting and prettier I simply hate writing vanilla JavaScript anymore. Some people complain about the extra project setup needed but I find that time pays for itself immediately.

        • Andrew
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          011 months ago

          Extra project setup like pnpm add -D typescript && tsc --init? One thing that is kinda annoying is that you have to manage were will js files go.

                • Andrew
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                  111 months ago

                  I don’t know. I never used eslint, therefore it is not needed. Everything works perfectly fine without it.

                  Why do you need it?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    111 months ago

                    Same reason you use typescript. It helps you catch bugs and follow programming best practices. You also don’t need typescript, but with it your code is better. Typescript is technically just a really fancy linter. The actual compilation mainly just removes the type data and does some JavaScript engine compatibility.

      • @[email protected]
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        811 months ago

        You need to remember that a lot of those best practices are to cover for the performance issues from misusing loosely typed variables.

        The JavaScript engine can compile clean, type-safe code down to be almost as fast as properly compiled code. When you use various features like the loose equals or various object mutations and the like, the engine cannot optimize it, leaving your code much, much slower.

          • @[email protected]
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            411 months ago

            Yup! I love TypeScript, and I love the flexibility of JavaScript. With all of the type templates and generics and other black magic TypeScript has, it’s pretty easy to even support the crazy stuff like mixins and contextual parameters (if I’m not speaking too loosely while avoiding proper terms!).

            A lot of the crazy stuff won’t optimize, but at least it goes to show how it’s not really tying JavaScript’s hands even when requiring TS everywhere.

    • @[email protected]
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      611 months ago

      thanks to eslint enforcing it in the default rules it’s necessary for most typescript projects

      • Nato Boram
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        411 months ago

        Except that you should use Prettier for formatting instead of ESLint. That said, semicolons are useless noise

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            It adds even more auto formatting rules so you can basically stop thinking about formatting entirely. I used to be opinionated about formatting but now I just go with whatever prettier does. It’s not always the best but it’s consistent and it’s a big chunk of my brain I can free up for things that matter. It also formats things safely so you don’t run into those weird edge cases where semicolons matter if you choose to turn them off.

            • @[email protected]
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              311 months ago

              Aren’t some of the scenarios for needing a semicolon logical-domain problems and not syntax issues? I wouldn’t trust autoformatting to spot a logical problem, though I also hope no one is writing code that flippantly. (as if honest mistakes aren’t common enough!)

              • @[email protected]
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                311 months ago

                Maybe there’s some edge case but in my years of using prettier I haven’t encountered one once.

        • Andrew
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          111 months ago

          Never used eslint. prettier is a must. semicolons are only needed to split some rare TS syntax lines.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      I wouldn’t do it without an auto formatter. With prettier it will catch potential no semi colon issues.

      • Andrew
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        111 months ago

        You absolutely have to use prettier with JS. I don’t think there is auto adding missing semicolons in C/C++ though, it would be very useful.

      • @[email protected]
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        011 months ago

        I tried prettier and I thought it was literally making my code uglier. It’s eslint --fix for me.

    • EtzBetz
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      11 months ago

      Yes, true. I also did setup so that any missing semicolon will be added, because I got sick of not inserting them sometimes and then some code was without them and some was. (Before I tested just leaving them all out, out of fun, so I got into the habit of just leaving them out regularly)