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Comment by rauschma | Hacker News Reader

For what it’s worth: That’s not what motivated this blog post. It was that I often encounter people who see the three dots being used in parameter definitions or destructuring and don’t understand what is going on (because they think it is spreading). The section on triple dots not being operators is more of a side note.

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I don't think GP was saying your blog post was pedantic. I think they were referring to the stack overflow answer (which, unlike yours, was kind of pedantic). Your post was great.

That said, since we're discussing pedantry, I truly do mean for this to be constructive. In the US at least, most people avoid putting the "Dr." title in their name unless they're in a context where it specifically matters (such as on a course syllabus that they're teaching in university, for example). Medical doctors is an area where this is much less true. The "Dr." title can come off to many people as very pedantic unless it is specifically relevant to the situation.

Part of that is probably because historically in software development/engineering there's been a stigma against people that didn't graduate or go to university, so people feel insecure about others with a lot more education than them. It's gotten a lot better, but there's definitely still some of that happening even now.

I also want to say _thank you_ for your books and blog! I've found them quite helpful over the years. Javascript isn't my primary language so I often have to look things up, and I always click on your posts first because I know that they will:

1. Be brief and to the point (not a bunch of extra unrelated stuff to sort through)

2. Be very clear (never adds more confusion)

3. Be technically accurate

4. Thoroughly answer the question in the title

Thanks for all you do kind sir!

Thanks for the kind words!

W.r.t. the “Dr.”: It’s interesting how much reactions differ. In Germany, people tend to think you are smart if you have a title. In the States, people tend to think you’re incapable of functioning in the real world.

I’m still experimenting. The title has worked well for me w.r.t. branding. Sometimes I mention it, sometimes I don’t.

So it seems like the good Doctor does have a doctorate in a very relevant field. Informatics is quite closely related to programming especially as I understand in continental European universities. I find that knowing that the author has studied in the field for 10+ years is very relevant and adds authority to the blog.

The confusion is a byproduct of using the same syntax in multiple places. It's even easy to fall into the trap of reasoning through the logic of what's happening as spreading, e.g.: "If I put the spread syntax right before the argument in my function, I'm telling the engine to essentially spread [ arguments[n] ... arguments[arguments.length] ] into this single argument value, where 'n' is the position of my spread syntax."

It's not truly correct but if you think about it in this manner it actually fits reasonably well into what the result is.

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