I thought this was a joke library. Then I checked the NPM stats.
6,597 downloads in the last day
28,883 downloads in the last week
134,084 downloads in the last month
6,597 downloads in the last day
28,883 downloads in the last week
134,084 downloads in the last month
'use strict';
module.exports = function isObject(x) {
return typeof x === 'object' && x !== null;
};
The part that really blows my mind? This project has had 57 commits to it! That's basically proof that the project management overhead exceeds a sane cost/benefit tradeoff.
The one advantage I see to having borderline-ridiculous packages such as this is that they do One Thing Well [1]. Yes you may copy/paste an isObject() function or roll your own, but then it becomes your responsibility to make sure it works for your project, and arguably far fewer eyes on it when it doesn't. As long as the project's maintainer is dedicated to making this the best way to determine whether a variable is an object, I have no problem using it.
Although, I do find the 57 commits irksome. Most of them are just upgrading dependencies (code style checkers, etc.), "fixing" indentation, and in one case 7 separate tweet-sized diffs to the README on the same day, as if this guy has git commit/push bound to Ctrl+S in his editor.
[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html
Yeah, sure, if the maintainer becomes evil overnight he can break a lot of apps. If you live in fear then you probably won't enjoy npm very much.
There is no reason for such a focused module to go out of style. As with many other small modules, the API and major version is locked barring some catastrophic event. Maybe there is a rare edge case that will break, and then you end up with two modules which are both useful in their own regard (like point-in-polygon and robust-point-in-polygon).
Sure, but one function per package is silly. Why not just put all the related utility functions in one package? Underscore does One Thing Well too. And if I really, really care about optimizing for small JS file size, I can just go in my Underscore.js file and remove all the functions I don't want to use.
It's nice to have the option.
I think that function does what it's supposed to "well" in the sense that 1. it works, 2. the code is clean and obvious and 3. it doesn't try to be clever and do "complex" things which can introduce bugs.
I'm guessing from your complaint that you think it doesn't do things "well" because you prefer code to computationally efficient over conceptually and declaratively clear?
You can argue that "But for -this- little thing I can afford to be a clever and throw the obvious-looking code out the window!", but then everyone else also gets to do the same judgement too.
And then suddenly you're all using "clever" code all over the place with new ingenious ways to break everywhere in your code-base. And just like clockwork, your application will start breaking and nobody will know why without spending hours, days or even weeks debugging.
Let's say I generally don't think computationally efficient code is worth that cost. I'll make exceptions for specific code-portions which needs to be fast, but for my bread and butter code? Make it plain and simple!
The module in question is nothing but a #define macro. Javascript lacks a preprocessor and this community's response is apparently to outsource #define macro's to a centralized server.
>And just like clockwork, your application will start breaking
The alternative is that just like clockwork, your application grinds to a crawl and practically freezes the browser. Because you outsourced every last thing to someone who doesn't care about performance. Sure, it's fine for the static-html-page-that-you're-doing-in-node-for-some-inexplicable-reason. Just hope you know what you're doing when you do something more complicated.
I did do some tests a around this, but it showed nothing substantial. The comparison solution is much faster overall, the only point it falls down is with all lowercase strings where an early return would obviously be faster. Even a regexp was faster in some cases. It's highly subjective.
var foo = [1, 2, 3, 4];
foo.bar = "I exist";
console.log(foo.bar);
foo.baz = function() { return "So do I"; }
console.log(foo.baz());