Apple JavaScript Coding Guidelines [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Apple JavaScript Coding Guidelines [pdf]

developer.apple.com

66 pointstbassetto25 comments

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> Just as you used the new

> operator to create an object, you should delete objects when you are finished withthem, like this:

> delete myObjectVariable;

What a bunch of crap? Have these guys even looked at the specs?

And chapter on inheritance really makes me cry...

Already discussed in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854783 with the same consensus, it's a terrible guide. Read Crockford, Stoyanov, Bolin instead.

For those who would prefer an HTML version: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Script...

Or the actual PDF itself, which lacks the Scribd™ value-added feature of banner ads on every page:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Scripti...

I think the OP's link is actually to the PDF. HN adds the automatic Scribd link whenever someone posts a link to a PDF.

Wow, that's horrible.

The original announcement (2008):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/50406482/Hacker-News-Integrates-Wi...

I have a strong reason to suspect that this was written by an intern who was relatively new to the language. It seems to be written by someone in the C/C++/Java mindset (ie how they didn't list "function" as a primitive data type)

Function is not a separate data type in JavaScript, but they could probably list Object there (EcmaScript defines 6 types and 5 primitive values, I can't really find any definition of "primitive type")

Man, what a piece of shit. Apple should pull this immediately.

Good that I saw this before reading the pdf. Can you point me to a better resource?

As seen elsewhere in the comments, Crockford's is very good:

http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html

JavaScript Garden is the best collection of JavaScript best practices I have seen so far: http://bonsaiden.github.com/JavaScript-Garden/

The example in this document of using the delete operator on a function is wrong.

http://perfectionkills.com/understanding-delete/

I find it strange that the "Global Scope Considerations" section uses Ruby-style inline comments (#) rather than actual JS inline comments (//).

I find it strange that you refer to comments starting with # as Ruby-style comments.

Or any other language that denotes comments with an octothorpe, but I opted for brevity.

I'm pretty sure Ruby is bigger than Perl and sh put together now, at least in mindshare.

python and PHP also support # for making comments. It could be argued that python has just as much if not more mindshare than ruby. :)

I agree. I think "Python-style comments" would be just as reasonable a term. My impression was that the comment I was responding to was objecting on historical grounds, since Ruby and Python borrowed that comment style from Perl, which in turn borrowed it from shell scripts.

Most of the examples use C style curly braces, maybe Crockford needs to do an "Apple Tech Talk".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook

Or just read this? http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html

I guess Crockford is like K&R for JS's conventions.

It’s shocking that this document refers to "classes". JavaScript doesn’t even have classes.

Why is this comment deprecated? He's absolutely right, if a little late to the party. Shockingly bad document from Apple.

Two years old?

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