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Comment by DTrejo | Hacker News Reader

Here's an article about why preceding comma is very convenient:

http://ajaxian.com/archives/is-there-something-to-the-crazy-...

More specifically, in which is it easier for you to find the error?

  // error in standard style
  var a = "ape",
    b = "bat",
    c = "cat",
    d = "dog"
    e = "elf",
    f = "fly",
    g = "gnu",
    h = "hat",
    i = "ibu";

  // error in comma-first style
  var a = "ape"
    , b = "bat"
    , c = "cat"
    , d = "dog"
    e = "elf"
    , f = "fly"
    , g = "gnu"
    , h = "hat"
    , i = "ibu"
    ;

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Yeah, I understand why, particularly when old IE browsers don't allow a comma trailing the final declaration. I just find it ugly as hell.

Unfortunately trailing commas still break IE7, which I wouldn't yet classify as old enough to ignore.

I'm not ignoring it but my code always runs through JSLint each time its saved and that picks up misplaced commas for me. Also we're not talking about client-side javascript here; fortunately Node.js uses the V8 Javascript engine, not the IE7 one. :)

I'd rather occasionally have comma bugs than make all my code horrendously ugly. Also, most people don't set their tabstop to 2 characters, which means you have to use space key twice in every variable declaration. That's got to be annoying.

Many node projects use soft tabs set to two spaces.

If that's so, why do we not see this in other mainstream languages? While I see the slight advantage of seeing errors, that is the first thing node sees. I use either nodemon or cluster, which both monitor your program on saving your code. When you think you're ready to go, save and see if it has no compile errors.

I do this all the time on large SQL statements. Otherwise, I rarely use the comma operator, so it hasn't come up.

I don't know if haskell counts as a mainstream language, but it's pretty common to see this pattern in a module's export list. I go back and forth.

Haskell's an odd case; experienced Haskell users are likely to be thinking of the comma as less of a "separator" than a "combinator" constructing a tuple, and preceding-combinator-on-newline is an idiomatic style. Which doesn't disprove your point, I'm just saying it's an edge case. This is after all the language community that interprets a semicolon (as used in most languages) as a combinator too.

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