The dependency injection thing is really a non issue. Just use something like ng-min before you minify and you are set. Just for the price of another entry in your grunt.js file.
Maybe your use of quotes is to make fun of the article, but in any case, I'll say this: I disagree it is a bug, rather it is a shortcoming of a minifier that it does not preserve the semantics of the input program.
Since this shortcoming is hard or impossible to overcome completely, case-specific post-processors to help out the minifier sound reasonable to me.
I think it's simply a flawed design to use reflection to read function parameter names and then use that information to apply semantics. I think parameter naming is something that shouldn't directly be semantic, as that's what most developers except. If, for example, I'm supplying a callback function to a library, I don't except the library to read the parameter names and then do stuff differently depending on the variable naming I happened to use.
I think your point about the minifier being "broken" is a good one, but the real problem is with AngularJS in my opinion.
No, ActiveRecord never looks at argument names. (unless you're talking about Ruby's named parameters, which is nothing like Angular's DI and not AR-specific)
What I meant is db tables and field names get converted into ruby class names and properties/methods. This is basically convention over configuration. It's the same with angular.
I agree, it's flawed design and a crutch that comes about due to the lack of a better type system. But the cited reason (that it doesn't work with a minifier) is bogus.
The way you spell your parameters does not fall under the "semantics of the input program". That is purely syntax, and it should have no bearing on the execution of the program.
This shortcoming is easy and possible to avoid in the first place, totally eliminating the need for case-specific post-processors to help out the minifier.
Some advice: next time you design a framework, how about designing it not to require case-specific post-processors from the start? Then you won't end up with so many shortcomings that are hard or impossible to overcome completely.
Actually the naming of parameters do have meaning in many programming languages and changing a name of a parameter is there considered a breaking change. In both Python and c# you can call a function like foo(bar=4), where bar is the parameter name. Whats interesting here is also that python is dynamic and c# staticically compiled. Automatic mapping of functions to xmlrpc or other serializing would be another example.
I'd say that angulars behavior here is very unexpected, by mapping parameter names to registered controllers, but I'm not sure if the minifier can be said to be incorrect. If javascript has a way to get the names of the parameters, is it then incorrect to assume this can be used? Strictly speaking if you want to conform fully almost nothing can be minified since object==dictionary but you have to draw the line somewhere, maybe parameter names are moving over that line.
> The way you spell your parameters does not fall under the "semantics of the input program". That is purely syntax, and it should have no bearing on the execution of the program.
I agree that identifier names should not matter for semantics, but it's quite possible to write JS (and other language) programs that do. So, your first sentence is simply incorrect, it is part of the semantics.
So yes, it's not best practices to do this, but it's not exactly "insane". Constraining your design on non-semantic-preserving minifiers is not the answer.
Also: In your last sentence, like in the linked article, it sounds like you and the author are under the belief that framework/api design is easy - and anyone who gets it wrong is an idiot.
There's also a new strict di enforcement option that'll make angular error if you don't have the min friendly di syntax in use. That's the best way imo and probably what angular should've always done.
And his reasoning around that was inanity disguised with high concept. He already advocates for a build process to minify code, ng-annotate simply expands the condensed DI syntax to the array notation.
> And his reasoning around that was inanity disguised with high concept.
To elaborate: invoking the argument "you reduce to the Halting Problem, suxxor!" without some concrete examples of how the practical problem (i.e. ng-min implementation) encounters difficulties is disingenuous. It's not uncommon to be able to cover some very useful space of a real-world problem, skirting "inside" a problem which is theoretically limited by the Halting Problem or similar. Occasionally you hit a limitation in your algorithm and add a special case, further claiming practical territory from The NP-Complete Beast.
In this case, the strict di enforcement that baconner mentioned in this thread provides an escape hatch: if you're using ng-min while having di enforcement enabled, you'll at least get warned if something goes amiss. If so, add your manual DI annotations, maybe file an ng-min bug, and move along.
Or just get into the habit of writing minifiable code. I think the benefits of using angular (dirt-simple two-way binding) largely outweigh the criticisms levied here, especially for simple applications. I have written large and complex applications with routing, and there were a lot of difficulties, but I think that is probably true of any framework that tries to do as much as angular.
Decades ago I got out of the habit of writing C code that was easy for the compiler to translate into VAX machine language instructions. I didn't realize those skills I let atrophy might someday became useful again for JavaScript.
When do you think schools teaching JavaScript should instruct their students how to write easily minifiable code? Is that an appropriate topic for JavaScript 101, or is it more of a graduate level thing?
Can you please suggest any good online course where I can learn this important skill that you're suggesting all JavaScript programmers should have?
Has Doug Crockford written a book called "JavaScript: The Minifiable Parts"?
Does Google test job candidates for the ability to write minifiable JavaScript code on the white board during job interviews, by giving them a dry erase marker that's almost run out?
FWIW, back when I joined Google Search in 2009 the whole company was on a huge latency kick, and yet inline JS snippets in the HTML weren't compiled, and so there were instances where we had to "human compile" Javascript down into its minimum form. Single-character variable names, foreach-loops that look like "for(var i,e;e=c[i++];){...}", ordering statements so that they would GZip better - basically we were trying to simulate an optimizing JS compiler in our heads. I had code reviews turned back because I could save 1 byte in total GZipped size with a different for-loop construction.
Yes, this is insane. No, they don't do this anymore. But I'm glad I had the opportunity to do this (on somebody else's dime), because it made me really think about latency and on the performance trade-offs you make to get maintainable code. Code size is not free; many devs think it is, and they write really bloated SPAs as a result. And there's also a lot of low-hanging fruit that doesn't require lots of engineer effort but gives appreciable latency benefits.
No need to go overboard there Don. In fact, my statement was really intended to mean "minifiable" in the sense of an angular application. That is, following documented best practices for writing a minifiable application in angular as described here: https://docs.angularjs.org/tutorial/step_05
By "especially for simple applications" do you actually mean "only for extremely simple applications"?
So do you really believe that the insane scoping madness described in the article, and the fact that Angular's new templates breaks HTML syntax making it impossible to edit/validate/transform/generate/consume them with standard off-the-shelf HTML tools, are really not big issues, and dirt-simple two-way binding outweigh those problems, and are impossible to do without causing those other problems in the first place?
Since the order a user fills out text fields on a web page affects the scope in bizarre unexpected ways, shouldn't Angular automatically disable the offending second text field until the first is filled out, and provide tooltips and help text explaining to users why they're disabled, to force users to enter them in the correct order, that will not undermine the intent of the developer? Is that the kind of implicit magic that you expect from your full service front end web development stack, that makes it all worth it in the end?
Personally, I'd rather have a scoping mechanism that's less magical and astonishing, and more deterministic and predictable. And a templating system that doesn't forsake and reject the rich existing ecosystem of HTML and XML tools.
