Paqmind styleguides

Preconfigured .eslintrc.

Rules

Nothing here is a dogma. We keep an option to reconsider everything as we discover more arguments.

Rule 1

Write and style code in a language-agnostic way. Portability of knowledge and reading / writing skills is a goal.

Rule 2

Dealing with choice in Rule 1, prefer syntax and semantics of better languages (Haskell, etc.).

Rule 3

Avoid complicated grammar rules.

Applications

if vs switch

Prefer if over switch by default.

let vs const

const implies immutability which it does not provide (so lies)

const xs = []
xs.push("oops")

The only difference between const and let is

let x = 1   // ok
x = 2       // ok
const y = 1 // ok
y = 2       // error

The problem comes with JS imperative constructs

const result = null
if (flag) {
  result = "foo" // nope
} else {
  result = "bar" // no way
}

So your code will contain let statemets anyway. It's noisy and inconsistent to declare variables depending on them being overriden or not somewhere down the code. If you remove if which forced you to use let, will you update the latter to become const? If you have time to bother yourself with such things you probably need to reconsider your priorities.

const also can't help with function argument reassignments which are the core things that should not be reassigned. So, as every not-working palliative solution – we propose to ditch it.

To underline:

• multiple types of variable assignments violate Rule 1.
  
• const violates Rule 2, let – satisfies.

Variable reassignment are easy to manage and debug because their effect is scoped (unlike mutations).

Other people on the same topic:

• https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/es6-const#comment-32
• https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/es6-const#comment-41
• https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/es6-const#comment-42

Yehuda Katz is not a fan of const as well.

Double quotes vs Single quotes

Double quote are in-line with Haskell, Elm, Clojure conventions. Single quotes are not.
Following Rule-2 we use double quotes as default one. Single quotes are used when it's convenient to avoid escaping. With double quotes, it's easier to convert data from JS to JSON and vice-versa. More arguments: http://michalzalecki.com/why-i-use-doublequotes-in-javascript/

Semicolons

There are much more rules for "where you need to put semicolon" than rules for "where you can't omit semicolon". Following Rule 3 we discard semicolons from our code. No problems so far :)

Triple equals

It's almost a mantra in JS community to always use ===, insead of ==. So you'll often see typeof foo === "function" like if typeof could suddenly return non-string value. Almost noone questions this rule. Well, let's discuss it here.

Do you really think the following should return false?

"1" == 1

Personally, I would say both true and false results aren't good. It's not that "1" and 1 aren't equal. It's that you shouldn't compare values of different types unless you're ok with their auto-coercion. The thing is: you always need to think of types. This is how you would behave in almost all other languages (Rule 1 and Rule 2).

Then I can tell you, from my own JS experience (spanning 5+ years) that I has exactly ZERO bugs caused by ==. Just like with let used "instead of" const. And practice is one of the best truth criterias we have.

And besides that, there are no strict equivalents for >, >=, <, <=. Do you people complaining about that? Meh, no.

Ditto: we recommend to use == whenever it's appropriate (most of the time, if you don't mess types).

P.S.

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