Underscore.js: Annotated Source Code

http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.html

by shawndumas • 16 years ago

65 25 16 years ago

documentcloud.github.com

helium• 16 years ago

I wish more open source libraries had this. This seems to be a trend in the javascript ecosystems. Coffeescript also has this. http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

shawndumas6• 16 years ago

Same author; the venerable Jeremy Ashkenas[1].

And yes; quality is fractal.

----

[1] http://github.com/jashkenas

lux• 16 years ago

I'd love to know if there's a lib for generating annotations like this from source comments. I've always loved docs tha include the code for reference, helps to see what's actually going on :)

sant0sk1• 16 years ago

http://github.com/jashkenas/docco

http://github.com/rtomayko/rocco

http://github.com/rtomayko/shocco

jashkenas4• 16 years ago

Docco is CoffeeScript/JavaScript, Rocco is Ruby, Shocco is Shell, and there's one more (that I know of) ... Pycco for Python:

http://github.com/fitzgen/pycco

And a first cousin, once removed: Dox (JavaScript):

http://visionmedia.github.com/dox/

shawndumas6• 16 years ago

I just submitted one earlier this morning[1].

-----

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767758

moron4hire• 16 years ago

This is just a style comment, but given JavaScript's open class prototypes and expando objects, I generally prefer to write these methods as new members on their natural classes. For example, the RegEx escape method would be on the RegEx class itself, rather than being a stand alone function.

Other than that, this is an incredibly useful set of functions that any JavaScript developer should have in their toolkit.

rtp• 16 years ago

You mean like putting the methods into the native classes' prototypes? That's a bad idea. The reason why it is a bad idea is that you cannot extend a prototype only within a scope, i.e if you change the prototype, it'll be changed regardless of whether it'll break another library, or that another library replaces your methods and thus render your library broken. This opens up the risk that you'll end up with bugs that are hard to trace to their source.

luigi• 16 years ago

Next to jQuery, Underscore is my most-used JS library. Makes scripting client-side behavior so much more pleasant.

shawndumas6• 16 years ago

"It's the tie to go along with jQuery's tux."[1]

-----

[1] http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/

chewbranca2• 16 years ago

I don't understand this statement. Initially when I saw underscore.js a few weeks ago, I was under the impression it was a light weight js library for when you didn't want to use jquery or something even heavier. Do you use this in conjunction with jquery? Could someone please explain the use case for this library as their is a fair bit of duplication between this and jquery.

pyronicide• 16 years ago

Totally agreed. Underscore has quickly become the one js library that I cannot live without, no matter what.

steadicat4• 16 years ago

I tweeted this yesterday:

Why does Underscore.js get the order of arguments wrong? There’s a reason why it’s map(fn, l), not map(l, fn). And the reason is currying.

I find that very annoying for the kind of functional programming I tend to do. For that reason alone I started looking at Wu.js instead.

Am I missing something?

shawndumas6• 16 years ago

I mainly use Object-Oriented Style[1].

-----

http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/#styles

jashkenas4• 16 years ago

Order of arguments shouldn't be a fundamental problem for currying -- libraries like Functional.js allow you to curry from the left, or to curry from the right, as you desire.

However, having higher-order functions in JavaScript take their function argument in the final position is an extremely common and important pattern in JavaScript. Most libraries prefer this:

    call(arg, arg, function() {
      ...
    });

Instead of this (which hides relevant arguments far away from the actual call site):

    call(function() {
      ...
    }, arg, arg);

mrkurt• 16 years ago

You really want the order of arguments to be 'fn,list' when you're working with a language that has partial function application (currying with no special syntax, basically). In a language like Javascript where you have to resort to a curry function, there's no practical difference. A curry function implementation can actually be made to work with either argument order pretty easily.

And in javascript, having the function last is relatively standard and much nicer to look at.

Underscore.js: Annotated Source Code

Related Stories