Top all-time · #5283
A hint of chaos
Personal blog · spion.github.io/postsprogrammingweb
A hint of chaos is a personal blog at spion.github.io about programming and web. Since 2013, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “Analysis of Complexity, Performance, and Debugability of Async Patterns in Node”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Gorgi Kosev's blog on JavaScript async programming: promises, generators and async/await. Commenters cite its posts as sources on Promise libraries, generator error handling and async/await drawbacks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Analysis of Complexity, Performance, and Debugability of Async Patterns in Node7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2013-08-09
- Why I am switching to promises5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-10-12
- ES7 async functions – a step in the wrong direction (2015)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-03-25
- JavaScript isn't cancer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-10-11
What Hacker News says?
There's https://github.com/zenparsing/es-typed-catch to solve the problem I raised here 3 years ago: https://esdiscuss.org/topic/try-catch-conditional-exceptions... and there's a good writeup on problems with async/await by fellow bluebird contributor Gorgi Kosev (spion) here: https://spion.github.io/posts/es7-async-await-step-in-the-wr... (Although I don't really agree with it)
Comment linking /posts/es7-async-await-step-in-the-wrong-direction.html
on “Async and Await”Submitted Why I am switching to promises as a story · 124 points
HN discussion> Promises are not the only way to do async work in JS, as much as some people like to say that. You have observables and channels, which are more powerful because they handle streaming. Let me just try and translate that into sync-land: "Single value variables are not the only way to do work in JS, as much as some people like to say that. You have arrays and queues, which are more powerful because they handle multi…
Comment linking /posts/es7-async-await-step-in-the-wrong-direction.html
on “Microsoft Edge gets native ECMAScript 7 async/await support in latest build”Submitted ES7 async functions – a step in the wrong direction (2015) as a story · 81 points
HN discussionDoes koa (or co) solve the problem with generators where * stack traces of errors are useless? [1] * missing catch filters/pattern matching i.e. catch (e) {} also captures type, reference and range errors i.e. "pokemon exception handling"? [1]: http://spion.github.io/posts/analysis-generators-and-other-a...
Comment linking /posts/analysis-generators-and-other-async-patterns-node.html
on “Koa – Next-generation web framework for Node.js”Submitted Analysis of Complexity, Performance, and Debugability of Async Patterns in Node as a story · 6 points
HN discussionHmm, those are strange results indeed. I would not be surprised if those measurements were made a year ago. Back then, promises were really slow. But then bluebird came out and changed everything, and many of the other promise libraries followed suit. Most promise libs are now really lightweight (with the only remaining exception being Q). See https://gist.github.com/spion/6990910 ; http://spion.github.io/posts/why-…
Comment linking /posts/why-i-am-switching-to-promises.html
on “Yahoo Mail moving to React”Submitted JavaScript isn't cancer as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHave you looked into bluebird[1]? It and most of the available promise libraries have a nodify-esque function where you can simple do this: var fs = Promise.promisifyAll(require("fs")); And all of the regular methods in fs are now promisable. Q also seems to be one of the slowest[2] promise libraries there is. I'm not sure why so many people use it. That guy has a rather large benchmark table from a couple months ag…
Comment linking /posts/why-i-am-switching-to-promises.html
on “JavaScript Promises: There and back again”Submitted ES7 async functions – a step in the wrong direction as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI touch on it a little bit here: https://spion.github.io/posts/javascript-is-not-cancer.html TLDR: I believe its mostly due to the lack of basic language facilities in pre-ES6 JS. With ES6 covering the basics this will probably slow down (At the very least people will stop writing their own module and object systems)
Comment linking /posts/javascript-is-not-cancer.html
on “Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?”Submitted [JS] Why I am switching to promises as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis has nothing to do with it. I love promises but they are truly limiting. Here is an example of how promises limit the power of mobx https://twitter.com/spion/status/958906847385341952 Another example relevant in node is continuation-local-storage (equivalent to threadlocal storage). Implementing it on top of generators or other "chainable / thenable" abstractions is trivially easy. Implementing it on top of nati…
Comment linking /posts/es7-async-await-step-in-the-wrong-direction.html
on “Promises are not neutral enough”Submitted Machine learning ethics as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"the debugging story for generators is somewhat bad, especially because of the missing stack traces for thrown errors. Fortunately, there are solutions and workarounds, like those implemented by genny (obtrusive, reduces performance) and galaxy (unobtrusive, but requires native modules)." From the post you brought up, http://spion.github.io/posts/analysis-generators-and-other-a... -- by the author of Genny. As I sai…
Comment linking /posts/analysis-generators-and-other-async-patterns-node.html
on “Asynchronous Error Handling”Submitted Analysis: Generators and other async patterns in Node.js as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote a detailed comparison of JS async coding patterns here (emphasis on ES6 generators): http://spion.github.io/posts/analysis-generators-and-other-a... Unfortunately most patterns that consolidate error handling also result with useless stack traces, or have to resort to performance-reducing trickery (Q). This also includes generators.
Comment linking /posts/analysis-generators-and-other-async-patterns-node.html
on “Asynchronous Error Handling”Submitted Analysis of generators and other async patterns in node as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOn the topic of using callbacks, promises + generators will enable you to do the same job with almost the same level of performance (see http://spion.github.io/posts/why-i-am-switching-to-promises.... ) whilst avoiding callback hell and having to perform error handling in multiple places. A good Promise library (like https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird ) even provides mechanisms for writing functions that both…
Comment linking /posts/why-i-am-switching-to-promises.html
on “JavaScript (and Node) Best Practices”Submitted Analysis of generators and other async patterns in node as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAsync await while looking nice compared to bare callbacks and Promises are still not without drawbacks. For example one cannot use await inside nested callback so it's in async functions it's necessary to use for-of and avoid forEach when dealing with Promise values. * http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-y... * https://spion.github.io/posts/es7-async-await-step-in-the-wr... Current solution is…
Comment linking /posts/es7-async-await-step-in-the-wrong-direction.html
on “Upgrading to Async/Await with JavaScript ES7”Submitted Analysis of generators and other async patterns in node as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
