Yes, I may have skimmed a little. But this doesn't excuse language makers for not anticipating such a use common case and returning a result that can be said to be expected (i.e. error, trying to add one list on other). If there isn't a real comparison, you should take a couple of people that are likely to use this and say "what should [] + [] return". You can't say that they couldn't have implemented " []+[] " throws a TypeError or something, even in a dynamic language.
It is said that API is UX for programmers. Well this is UX for a computer language. And JS fails at it. Big time. And this isn't the only stumbling rock (see global variables, == operator, semi-colon insertion, etc.).
My point was that developing under Node.js is same as developing under a browser only the lowest common denominator changes to V8.
Edit: I'm pretty sure + operator in Ruby concatenates two arrays.
Couldn't agree more. But that's the standard. At some point I hoped that the ES5 'use strict' would fix all of this SNAFU, but it didn't.
However, not even once I tried to sum [] + [] or {} + {} till that "wat" video. Funny, but unrealistic, therefore: close, but no cigar. One could operate the "World's safest table saw", but the common sense tells us that usually finger vs. saw => saw wins. Safer tools are desirable, but it's up to the craftsman to use them properly.
> the lowest common denominator changes to V8
V8 is pretty much on par with its competition with the ES5 adoption, therefore we can hardly talk about a lowest common denominator that's actually low. The only thing that I actually missed in V8 vs. the Mozilla engines is the support for E4X (which most runtimes don't support anyway).
http://kangax.github.com/es5-compat-table/ - even if IE6 and IE7 are gone from the traffic stats, IE8 is there to stay with the XP users. Some of us still don't have the possibility to just drop those users as long as the analytic data shows a fair share of legacy users.
Ruby isn't part of the "similar syntax" family. The '==' operator isn't recommended in JS (and PHP). In fact, jslint yells at you if you use it. That's why '===' exists. The semi-colon insertion is one of the big failures on the "allowed" part. Wish that never happened. But any developer that doesn't try to adhere to some hipster JavaScript coding style uses the semi-colon at the end of the statement.
It is said that API is UX for programmers. Well this is UX for a computer language. And JS fails at it. Big time. And this isn't the only stumbling rock (see global variables, == operator, semi-colon insertion, etc.).
My point was that developing under Node.js is same as developing under a browser only the lowest common denominator changes to V8.
Edit: I'm pretty sure + operator in Ruby concatenates two arrays.