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Comment by abirch | Hacker News Reader

Wait people write JavaScript without drinking bourbon?

The relationship between Bourbon (spirit), primarily distilled and aged in Kentucky, and Bourbon (vanilla plant), primarily grown in Madagascar is one of fascinating cross-convergence of "things rich French speakers loved", plus the coincident accident of Bourbon, Kentucky being a shipping port (and Oak as an aging vessel high in imparting vanillins). Both are a reminder that vanilla as a flavor was long a spice for (and named after) kings and to be enjoyed mostly by the rich. It is still hilarious to see things like "vanilla JS" meant to imply "boring" or "cheap" when historically that's very inaccurate.

Also, yes, bourbon (spirit) is a good accompaniment to late nights in JavaScript.

The etymology is legit and comes from ice cream, for which vanilla is considered the default or “plain” flavoring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_vanilla

Vanilla historically being fancy but then becoming an attainable and cheap additive is probably somewhat responsible for it becoming the default ice cream flavor, and thus flipping the idiomatic meaning.

Though note it was primarily the invention of artificial vanilla substitutes that made vanilla seem cheap/attainable. (Real Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, for instance, is still far more expensive than most people realize.) There may even be a larger useful metaphor there, too, that "plain" vanilla is most often "fake vanilla".

Lots of dessert / ice cream recipes use vanilla as an ingredient regardless of what the final flavor is meant to be. This also leads to the vanilla === plain misconception, imo.

I've been managing that since more than a decade. Having neither jQuery nor bourbon was a challenge at first but browser APIs evolved and I fell in love with green tea.

No thanks, I get high with Javascript alone and a hangover so bad that lasts the entire weekend.

My goto JS drink is Absinthe.

Please create a PR for my library goto-drink.js which uses labels for each libation so you can continue or break your drink.

You writing your front ends in Elm then?

I prefer Scotch

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