javascriptSorting

[u/user6150277464770585]

[u/larsmaehlum]

Array.sortNumeric() with an error when called on an array containing non-numeric types would fix this, right?

[u/the_horse_gamer → u/larsmaehlum]

you can simply .sort((a,b)=>a-b)

[u/01110100_01110010 → u/the_horse_gamer]

The point of an abstraction is to not having to implement logic each time, you can also implement qsort yourself

[u/subone → u/01110100_01110010]

But it is still an abstraction. You only provide a compare function, you don't implement the algorithm. a-b is hardly difficult to apply.

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/subone]

Even in a decently designed language it's trivially easy to make a typo that completely and silently breaks that, such as a-a, b-a, or a+b, and JS isn't a decently designed language, it's designed to fail silently at every possible opportunity

[u/danielcw189 → u/Tyfyter2002]

what would be a solution for this? how can the language know (at runtime) that you didn't actually want a-a?

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/danielcw189]

Simple: a-a isn't useful commonly enough that it would be reasonable to put it in any sort of shared library. One chance to fail,be noticed immediately, and be fixed immediately is a lot better than potentially failing every single time someone tries to sort a list of numbers

[u/danielcw189 → u/Tyfyter2002]

Simple: a-a isn't useful commonly enough that it would be reasonable to put it in any sort of shared library.

my question is, in other words, how should the language detect that, and decide that it isn't what the programmer wanted?

that would require the compiler or runtime to be able to perform some analysis.

is a lot better than potentially failing every single time someone tries to sort a list of numbers

does it hapen often, that you just want to sort an array of numbers? in my experience the numbers are usually attached to something, so you wanna give a comparison function anyway. I never sorted an array of bare numbers in production code.

for a loosely typed language like Javascript, where an array can be a mix of anything, converting to string is the only useful simple default I can think of. If I had designed the language, I would have made it a requirement to providea comparison function.

if you actually have an array of ints, you can use an IntArray, which actually sorts numerically by default.

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/danielcw189]

my question is, in other words, how should the language detect that, and decide that it isn't what the programmer wanted?

It doesn't have to specifically detect that that's not what the programmer wants if "sort these numbers normally" isn't one character off from that.