talking about cloture
more specifically the syntax of cloture
I am doing this episode a wee bit
hungover because yesterday was Halloween
I was at a party with a scary tales
theme
this was my costume it’s the three bears
from Goldilocks so why is it a good idea
to explore other languages we mostly use
JavaScript on this show but we don’t
want to learn JavaScript
we want to learn programming and to do
that we need to explore and expand our
horizons there is a lot of cool things
about closure but I want to focus on one
little detail today and that is the fact
that closure has almost no syntax at all
let’s compare closure to JavaScript this
up here this is valid JavaScript it will
evaluate to 6 now here is the same thing
in closure when I saw this for the first
time it made me go apeshit
why it’s the fluff on the left this
makes no sense this is because what we
are looking at is almost the entire
closure syntax almost all closure looks
like this it’s an open parenthesis
parenthesis I am NOT a native English
speaker and that is a hard word it’s an
open parenthesis then an operator and
then as many operands as you like and
then a closing parenthesis what what
does it mean I’ll show you some more
examples and you’ll get here is a
variable declaration in JavaScript and
the same one in closure we initialize
the variable my ferret with the value
waffles in the closure example we have
our operator death most definitely short
for a define and then two operands for
the variable my ferret and the variable
value waffles I’ll show you the third
example if you look at the JavaScript
here we evaluate a boolean expression
and then if it is true which it always
is in this case we return the first
statement at the question mark you can
have a delicious soup and then if it’s
false which is average we return the no
soup for you straight in the claw drip
code it’s the same bloody thing as the
other examples it’s an open parenthesis
the operator is and then followed by
three operands the first operand is the
boolean being evaluated always true and
the second operand is what we get if the
boolean is true which it always is and
the third operand is what we get if the
boolean is false which it never is in
this example so in closure it’s always
operator operand operand operand and
close parentheses and the closure that
is called a for but where are my curly
brackets what if I want to do multiple
things in my if statement like this if
true is true we should console.log a
message and then console of another
message well you do it the exact same
way so looking at this code you are
probably now recognizing closure as that
language with all the
parentheses but joking aside I mean look
at how elegant is this there is no new
syntax introduced here the only new
thing that we started to do is to nest
forms let’s go through it together
our outer form starts with the operator
if after that comes our first operand
the boolean being evaluated which is
always true and then comes another
nested form with the operator – and the
operator do will simply well do all of
the forms that is passed to it as
operands and that is these two print
line forms and that’s it now you know
90% of the closure syntax and it’s
pretty cool because most other languages
have
tons and tons of tons of different
language constructs while in closure
almost all functionality is enclosed in
the operators and the simple form syntax
you have watched an episode of fun fun
function a weekly show where we tried to
come more excited and confident about
programming by exploring old wisdom wild
ideas and having fun this is a weekly
show released on Mondays but not next
week because I am having a week off so
make sure that you follow me on twitter
at MP Jamie so that you don’t miss out
on that so until next next Monday stay curious