Interview with Ryan Dahl, Creator of Node.js

Re:Interview with Ryan Dahl, Creator of Node.js by watwut on Thursday August 31, 2017 @03:09PM (#15142918)

When your code wanders steeply to the right, then it is time to create named functions, variables or otherwise flatten it. Just like when the code nests too much for any other reason.

But I agree that js attracted "Real programmers don't use Pascal" kind of programmers at first. Pascal style programmers perceived js as pure hell and treated it as abomination. Through, I am not sure whether they were swayed or rather moved elsewhere in disgust.

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Re:Interview with Ryan Dahl, Creator of Node.js by int_19h on Friday September 01, 2017 @06:21AM (#15147299)

But that's the thing. With callbacks, code that is logically the same (except that it's async) that wasn't nesting too much before, was suddenly nesting too much after.

And conversely, you can reduce nesting to, basically, zero in any imperative language, if you replace all your conditionals and loops with a bunch of labels and gotos.

Which is to say, how much code nests is very much a language design issue. Good PL design should not cause unnecessary nesting where it's not warranted by the structure of the solution.

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