Blag

I was writing some code in a template that looked a lot like:

if (collection.HasItems)
{
  foreach (var item in collection)
  {
    <some markup>
  }
}
else
{
  <some message about no items>
}

and I realized that it would be awfully nice for for, foreach, and while loops to have an else clause.

Learning to program, it's quite common to come across many resources and code samples that include imperative loops of various sorts (particularly for and while).

Frequently when I see examples that include loops, I cringe. They often include many steps that make them harder to understand because there is so much happening every iteration.

Instead, I much prefer to use a functional approach to iteration. Each step can be converted to an individual function and those functions can be applied to the entire collection to produce a result.

There are several advantages to the functional approach over imperative:

• Named functions are essentially declarative; they describe what will happen rather than how it will happen.
• Splitting functionality into individual functions allows for code reuse.
• Pure functions can easily be tested individually.

This is a follow-up to my "Multisort via Composition" post, and won't make sense if you haven't read that post.

When sorting on a single dimension, changing the sort direction can usually be handled by changing the sorter function directly.

const data = [33, 1, 95, 77, 54, 91, 38, 89, 48, 24];

// ascending
data.sort((a, b) => a - b);

// descending
data.sort((a, b) => b - a);

making this act dynamically based on some external input can be reasonably handled by updating the function as well:

const ascending = getAscending(); // true or false
data.sort((a, b) => (ascending ? a - b : b - a));

This works fine for a single sorter, but quickly becomes untenable once multiple sorting dimensions are used:

Sorting a collection of data in a single dimension is pretty straightforward in most programming languages. It's quite common to use some sort of comparison interface that exposes a function with two parameters of the type being sorted, and expected return values of -1, 0, or 1.

For example, JavaScript has Array.prototype.sort, C# has IComparer, and PHP has usort.

This works quite well when you want to sort on a single property:

I recently saw Amber Weinberg's tweet after it blew up on twitter:

I refuse to use Sass
I refuse to use React
I refuse to use Redux

I’m still here and still have plenty of clients who appreciate clear, clean code.

— Amber Weinberg (@amberweinberg) December 1, 2017

My gut reaction was that it was a bit harsh to those of us who choose to use Sass, React, or Redux. It implies that anyone who uses those tools isn't writing clear, or clean code, which explains why so many front-end developers collectively flipped thier shit at it.

But seeing as Amber's a WordPress developer, it entirely makes sense to me that she would have no use for React and Redux. I can even see why she'd avoid Sass too*. The types of problems best solved by a WordPress site do not necessitate any use of React or Redux.

Joel Spolsky recently tweeted a message about some phrasing in a question that was a strong indicator that the question was inappropriate for Stack Overflow.

buddy if your stackoverflow question includes the words "I want to make some kind of programming" you might be asking on the wrong site

— Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) November 28, 2017

to my surprise, this elicited some strong reactions from other developers chastising him for turning away beginners from the site.

Here's the thing about Stack Overflow: