KindScript – A kinder JavaScript experience | Hacker News Reader

KindScript – A kinder JavaScript experience

github.com

41 pointsbogidon27 comments

Looks like this wasn't ready to be revealed, like someone accidently made the repo public.

The website is currently not public so I'm not going to try anything yet but as a co-foudner at an CS Ed-tech startup I'm going to keep my ears perked. MS has put out some really nice JS products recently.

Out of curiousity, what are you doing in CS Ed space?

i co-founded Mimir (YC S15). We're deploying tools like autograding and plagiarism detection in college classrooms to bring Universities into the 21st century.

Does that explain why the SSL cert on https://kindscript.com is for a Libyan domain? (https://yelm.tdev.ly)

Note: The https url to kindscript.com is listed on the git repo.

Rather than simplify Javascript and protect beginners from themselves, why not start with a language that is both powerful and protective and yet easy to learn, like Pascal - learn the basics there in a more structured language?

Lazarus is a free, cross platform IDE for Pascal and an excellent place to start: http://www.lazarus-ide.org/

On the one hand, it can be a little cruel to lock a kid in with a wolf, even a bound and crippled one. On the other hand, maybe it's actually kind to do so when the world outside is filled with wolves.

There's two things to getting people into programming - giving them tools they can learn with and making them care about it. You do the second by letting them accomplish things they actually want to do. Until you can script webpages or make Minecraft mods in Pascal, it's not very good at the second half of the equation.

Precisely correct! Adding authenticity and relevance to the first major learning experience is crucial for appealing to a wide array of beginners, especially people who don't necessarily see programming as a first-order joy.

Pascal is a complete nightmare to start people off with if they are going to move on to a language like JavaScript, Python, Ruby, C# or Java.

It's superficially similar but it has all kinds of archaic quirks and lacks basic affordances like return values or short-circuiting (i.e. in order to evaluate `a AND b` Pascal evaluates both).

You might as well argue that beginners should start with Assembly. If you want to be unnecessarily cruel at least teach them something useful like C/C++.

I agree! Moreover, why not let beginners start with a language they could actually use in real life?

When I tried to go to the main site, I got a cert_name_invalid error, and going to the site the cert identified as required auth.

Docs on point https://github.com/Microsoft/kindscript/blob/master/docs/ind...

I can't find any docs anywhere. When I go to the kinderscript site I get ssl error then a login block. Nothing in the wiki on github either.

Anybody have more luck.

It kinda looks like it's being "set up" right now in preparation for a more formal announcement. Maybe we just need to wait? It would be a little weird to make a big announcement right this moment, since it's currently Saturday night in Redmond.

There's a few pictures in the various Github issues, looks like a Scratch like programming environment, unless that was just the developers own software.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

I want a Javascript that does this right:

    var m = {};
    m["__alpha__"] = 10;
    m["__bravo__"] = 20;
    m["__proto__"] = 30;
    for(var k in m) console.log(k);

Result (in current JS):

    __alpha__
    __bravo__

EDIT: To be clear, I want a Javascript that is consistent. Imho, the fact that __proto__ is a property is a hack. Also, I suspect that a lot of software written in Javascript is susceptible to injection bugs/attacks by using the string "__proto__" as input in various places.

Why would you like to add anything to the __proto__ property? One way would be to write, like this:

  {
    const m = {}

    m.__alpha__ = 10
    m.__bravo__ = 20
    m.__defineGetter__('__proto__', () => 30)
    
    Reflect.ownKeys(m).forEach(key => console.log(key))
  }

EDIT: I can't format ...

To make my point clear, here is a question. What is wrong with the following function that counts the number of unique strings in a list of strings?

    function count_unique_strings(l)
    {
        var m = {};

        l.forEach(function(s)
        {
            m[s] = true;
        });

        var count = 0;
        for(var k in m) ++count;

        return count;
    }

To see why this function is incorrect, run it with the following input:

    console.log(count_unique_strings(["alpha", "bravo", "bravo", "charlie"]));
    console.log(count_unique_strings(["alpha", "bravo", "bravo", "__proto__"]));

What is wrong with the following function

The implementation is wrong: you're using Object when you want to use Map. Object is not suitable for this, and seems like you know it, and it's in language specs.

Yes, I stated beforehand that the implementation is wrong. My point is that it is not obvious from the implementation (and certainly not for beginners).

var m = Object.create(null);

Problem solved.

That solution doesn't cast javascript in a positive light.

Why should you need to know that much about the guts of the language just to create an associative array that works properly?

JavaScript objects aren't associative arrays. They inherit property values from their prototype. Not just __proto__, but hasOwnProperty, etc. If you want to abuse objects in this way, it makes sense that you need a special approach to opt out of inheritance.

A better approach is to just use Map.

var m = new Map();

It would have been so much better if inheritance was opt-in rather than opt-out.

What you want is to use is a map, not a JavaScript object. Here you go:

    const m = new Map();
    m.set("__alpha__", 10);
    m.set("__bravo__", 20);
    m.set("__proto__", 30);
    for (let k of m.keys()) {
       console.log(k);
    }

You're thinking of `Map` not `Object`.

Objects can be used as cheap maps but they're more than that. That's why ES2015 brought us Map and Set.

Both Map and Symbol already solve this in ES6.

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