Comment by JimDabell
5 years ago
We’re not splitting hairs. It is, quite literally, not JavaScript in a fundamental way.
If you want to go around telling people it’s a non-standard extension to JavaScript or if you want to go around telling people it’s a superset of JavaScript, then by all means do that. But it is simply not JavaScript. Why do you insist on saying otherwise? All that does is start completely pointless arguments. What do you gain from insisting it is JavaScript when it isn’t?
I think you're getting a little too worked up.
The point is this small extension to JS grammar lets you do templating with normal JS, instead of #for you can use .forEach, .map and other array methods.
You can use JS instead of replacing tokens in a template.
It's not a superset of JS, that's not accurate, it's an extension of the spec.
I hope the JSX spec is added to the standard sometime to stop this stupid debate.
Until you realize what JSX is you don't realize the full potential it has over templates.
> The point is this small extension to JS grammar lets you…
If that’s the point, why are you telling people it’s JavaScript? You can make that point just fine without starting arguments.
Saying “This is an extension to JavaScript” is fine. Saying “This is JavaScript” starts arguments. What is your goal here?
> I hope the JSX spec is added to the standard sometime to stop this stupid debate.
But you are starting this stupid debate by telling people it’s JavaScript when it isn’t. If you are tired of people pointing this out when you call it JavaScript, why do you do it? There seems to be absolutely nothing to gain from that except “a stupid debate”.
> Until you realize what JSX is
I know what JSX is. I’ve written plenty of JSX.
> you don't realize the full potential it has over templates.
We are not talking about the value of JSX, merely whether it is JavaScript or not. JSX could cure cancer, but it still wouldn’t be JavaScript.
> If that’s the point, why are you telling people it’s JavaScript? You can make that point just fine without starting arguments.
First, I say it's JS because it is. Just as decorators are JS. By being an extension of JS it is JS. The two are mutually inclusive.
Second, I didn't want to start an argument, I wanted to call out the very wrong blog post, how it referenced React not JSX, how the spec is an extension of JS, explain the limitations, etc. Until now it was more of a debate. Now it's a bit more of a semantics debate unfortunately.
> But you are starting this stupid debate by telling people it’s JavaScript when it isn’t. If you are tired of people pointing this out when you call it JavaScript, why do you do it? There seems to be absolutely nothing to gain from that except “a stupid debate”.
Actually if you go up the comment chain you'll see I didn't start this debate. If you're tired, just don't participate.
> We are not talking about the value of JSX, merely whether it is JavaScript or not. JSX could cure cancer, but it still wouldn’t be JavaScript.
Oh but we are, again if you go up the comment chain, it's being compared to Svelte's template system, that's how it got brought up, and that's usually why this topic gets brought up. You don't have to create a whole template system. You just use nested functions. To use pretty brackets it needs a small extension of the spec. You don't have to come up with a loop system, a conditional system, etc.
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> The point is this small extension to JS grammar lets you do templating with normal JS, instead of #for you can use .forEach, .map and other array methods.
But then React is much more than just "small extension".
Hooks alone are less of a Javascript than any Svelte template syntax.
We're not talking about React we're talking about JSX.
Svelte has a lot more going on than it's template language as well.
We're only comparing the templating system to JSX.
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