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Comment by mizzao | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how this is a Rube Goldberg machine. Everything that happens is triggered by a Javascript setTimeout call, not from the action that happened before.

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A Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption, invention, device or apparatus that is deliberately over-engineered to perform a simple task in a complicated fashion, generally including a chain reaction [from wikipedia]. In this example, the simple task is displaying the email button. And most computing operations are Rube Goldberg state machines if you think about it, no?

I think the point was that it's not really a chain reaction as each action has its own timer and will happen regardless of if any other action completes or doesn't complete.

Which is not to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it :)

It's an asynchronous embarrassingly parallel Rube Goldberg machine ;)

It's meant to look like one, even if it technically isn't implemented as one.

Would be cool if it used a huge callback or promises chain. Still cool/fun concept.

I wonder if it was intentionally implemented this way, would memory have been an issue with the amount of callback chaining required?

> would memory have been an issue with the amount of callback chaining required?

Unlikely; you gotta hit a really deep stack to really kill something with callback chaining.

It could have used a start button that sets focus to the first one and then each focus change makes it go to the next but without the setTimeouts it would go by so far it wouldn't be nearly as fun.

You could still add a delay function with a setTimeout, but you'd only need one.

A bit of a party pooper :).

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