Optional Parameters in Javascript

Want a nice laugh? Here it comes.

For years, I've been hacking in JavaScript, as it were, "on the side". Just as a necessary, sometimes fun, often loathesome part of the webproject experience.

When doing optional parameters, I always did this:

function foo(a) {
    if (arguments.length === 2)
        b = arguments[1];
    else
        b = 'bar';
}

The problem with this is so obvious I won't even spell it out.

Here's the puncher.

What I somehow managed to miss until today, is that you can also do this:

function foo(a, b) {
    if (typeof(b) === 'undefined')
        b = 'bar';
}

Shorter, sweeter, more obvious. If I'd just known this a bit earlier.

HAML, HTML, Ruby, and Marketing

I just took a look at HAML, having been linked there from Mark Hansen's blog posting @ http://www.markhansen.co.nz/autocompiling-haml/.

After about 2 minutes, I had two questions on my mind:

1.
Why, oh why, do ruby projects tend towards this massive, obtrusive self-marketing? "templating haiku", "Simplify. Enjoy. Laugh. 20 minutes later, you will never go back." To me, this just seems silly. Most of your users are technically-minded coders who will evaluate your project based on exactly one question: Will it make their lives easier?

When I look at, for example, www.vim.org, www.php.net, or, heck, even www.microsoft.com, I don't see that. Ain't nobody as can claim those are unpopular, failed sidenotes of IT history.

2.
Which leads me to my second question: In what way exactly is HAML more beautiful, elegant, or expressive than HTML? I mean, yeah, it has nifty "=" and "%" signs all over the place, and it doesn't duplicate code in closing tags, so that's an advantage I guess. On all the other hands, it seems to use semantic whitespace, which I loathe. I want my code surrondedwith fancy "{"s! I get to decide how to indent, and what, and why!!!!!111one!!

Maybe it integrates nicely into ruby/rails. I wouldn't know, I'm just a lowly PHP hacker. (It feeds me and my cats, so don't ask.) Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Maybe I'm gettin' too old for this sh*t. Or I'm not good enough.

Seriously, I just don't know.