Difference between revisions of "An Argument Against Requiring IIFEs"

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(The Common Arguments In Favor of IIFE's)
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Very few experienced programmers actually declare commonly used variable names inside the global namespace unless they have a reason to do it.
 
Very few experienced programmers actually declare commonly used variable names inside the global namespace unless they have a reason to do it.
 
The majority of programmers already declare their own global namespace object and place their declared variables inside of that instead.
 
The majority of programmers already declare their own global namespace object and place their declared variables inside of that instead.
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<pre>
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// This is what "polluting the namespace" looks like, while using
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var x = Window_Base.prototype.initialize;
 +
var y = Window_Base.prototype.lineHeight;
 +
 +
// In the above example, uses of 'x' and 'y' can be called from the global namespace.
 +
// Since 'x' and 'y' are highly common variable names, it's likely to be overwritten.
 +
// This can lead to any code that utilize 'x' and 'y' as called functions to not work.
 +
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// This what experienced programmers do:
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var ProgrammerName = {};
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ProgrammerName.Window_Base_initialize = Window_Base.prototype.initialize;
 +
ProgrammerName.Window_Base_lineHeight = Window_Base.prototype.lineHeight;
 +
 +
 +
</pre>
  
 
In regards to the second point: ''Keeping code private and unreadable from NodeJS's dev tools'', this is meaningless unless you have the code obscured from legibility, too.
 
In regards to the second point: ''Keeping code private and unreadable from NodeJS's dev tools'', this is meaningless unless you have the code obscured from legibility, too.
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|}
 
|}

Revision as of 21:48, 7 November 2021

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Introduction

Nah IIFE.jpg

This is a programming article, so if you don't understand JavaScript, don't care about JavaScript, or don't care about Immediately-Invoked Function Expressions (IIFE's), this article will probably mean nothing to you.

Now that that's out of the way, let's make sure we're all on the same page here. An Immediately-Invoked Function Expressions (IIFE) is the following:

(function () {
    ...
})();

It's a private scope that's created within the code that will run immediately upon its code being read. This has applications, yes, and from personal experience, there are times where its useful, too.

However, there's been a trend in the RPG Maker community, especially amongst plugin developers, that argue that entire plugins need to be wrapped around in an IIFE. I personally don't believe that. In fact, doing such a thing will often lead to problems later down the road especially if a plugin library gets bigger and bigger.


The Common Arguments In Favor of IIFE's

Here are the things I've seen people argue in favor of IIFE's:

  1. Not polluting the global namespace
  2. Keeping code private and unreadable from NodeJS's dev tools

In regards to the first: Not polluting the global namespace, uh, I'm not sure about you, but that's almost never gonna be a major issue especially when programmers become more experienced. Very few experienced programmers actually declare commonly used variable names inside the global namespace unless they have a reason to do it. The majority of programmers already declare their own global namespace object and place their declared variables inside of that instead.

// This is what "polluting the namespace" looks like, while using 
var x = Window_Base.prototype.initialize;
var y = Window_Base.prototype.lineHeight;

// In the above example, uses of 'x' and 'y' can be called from the global namespace.
// Since 'x' and 'y' are highly common variable names, it's likely to be overwritten.
// This can lead to any code that utilize 'x' and 'y' as called functions to not work.

// This what experienced programmers do:
var ProgrammerName = {};
ProgrammerName.Window_Base_initialize = Window_Base.prototype.initialize;
ProgrammerName.Window_Base_lineHeight = Window_Base.prototype.lineHeight;


In regards to the second point: Keeping code private and unreadable from NodeJS's dev tools, this is meaningless unless you have the code obscured from legibility, too.