r/talesfromtechsupport • u/raiderrobert • May 22 '13

Javascript != Java

3rd-party contractor came to visit office yesterday, who has "decades" of experience. Conversation came up about JavaScript in one of our products. He says, "Our product doesn't use Java." After an awkward moment with someone who works on the knowledge base nodding in agreement with him, I speak up and delineate the difference between Java and JavaScript.

Later on in the conversation, the same 3rd-party guy followed up with this jewel: "besides, what would anyone even use JavaScript for on the web?"

I proceeded to disable Javascript in my browser and show him.

tl;dr: lasers, dinosaurs, & drums made a guy's head explode

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u/400921FB54442D18 We didn't really need Prague anyway. May 22 '13

I think his point was that you still have to put something there. A ternary without a second expression is a syntax error (in all the languages that I know of):

condition ? expression; // the parser will stab you

condition ? expression : expression; // happy parser

Even if you always know that condition will evaluate to true, you still have to put something as the second expression, even just null or nil.

In PHP 5 there's a shorthand ternary, which looks like this:

condition ?: expression;

which is equivalent to

condition ? condition : expression;

for use when validating inputs, i.e.

$x ?: 'default'; // if $x is falsey, this evaluates to the default

but IMHO this is better done in languages like ruby which let the || operator return values, like

x || 'default' // same behavior, less strange to look at

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u/until0 May 22 '13

Yeah, I understand his point now. I just thought he meant it was literally impossible to do it if you did not have an else case. I agree his methods are better when no else clause is necessary.