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What is your favourite function()?

ｅｎｄａｎ on July 03, 2018

I think mine would be json_encode(). I think it's so cool that a single function can make your data understood by other machines. (I know other machines can interpret different kinds of data, but c'mon...)

How about you? What's your favourite function?

TJ Fogarty • Jul 3 '18

Based on usage it's probably console.log() or var_dump().

At the moment I'm enjoying some JavaScript array methods - filter, map, reduce.

ｅｎｄａｎ • Jul 3 '18

var_dump (); die ()!!!

Tiago Marques • Jul 3 '18

I usually do like:
die(var_dump());

ｅｎｄａｎ • Jul 4 '18

I stopped doing this simply because I can't do it if I dump multiple variables at once.

var_dump($res);
var_dump($res2);
die();

Alex Lohr • Jul 4 '18

But you could do die(var_dump($res, $res2));, couldn't you?

Tiago Marques • Jul 4 '18

You can

ｅｎｄａｎ • Jul 5 '18

Really? Wow, #TIL!

Tiago Marques • Jul 5 '18

Yeah, just like console.log(var1, var2) in JS

Adrian B.G. • Jul 3 '18

random() functions, there is so much more behind them then we usually think. I can talk hours about entropy and sources, techniques, pseudo algorithms and how can it improve almost any software product.

ｅｎｄａｎ • Jul 4 '18

Improve in what way?

Adrian B.G. • Jul 4 '18 • Edited

As in, some product features can be improved using random (shuffle or generate things), most basic example is chose new 5 news headlines to see from the top 100 articles to an user, each x seconds/page views.

ｅｎｄａｎ • Jul 5 '18

inb4
p e r s o n a l i z a t i o n
🤣

IsaacLeimgruber • Jul 4 '18

In the way of randomized algorithms

Meghan (she/her) • Jul 3 '18 • Edited

new Date()

ItsASine (Kayla) • Jul 4 '18

var moment = require('moment');

😉

Andžs • Jul 4 '18

In PHP I always include file with my custom helper functions. These two wrap output with <pre/> tags, which allows nice&quick debugging via browser from any class or template code.


function pre($obj = null, $escape = false){
    echo "<pre>";
    if($escape){
        $obj = htmlspecialchars ( print_r($obj, true) );
    }
    print_r($obj);
    echo "</pre>";
}

function dump($obj = null){
    echo "<pre>";
    var_dump($obj);
    echo "</pre>";
}

Dan Fellini • Jul 4 '18

HA! I have a pre() function too! I use it many, many times a day. Mine has the $obj, but then a title, so if I have multiple pre()s going, I know which is which. Like, pre( $obj, 'This is the user obj');
Love it.

ｅｎｄａｎ • Jul 4 '18

var_masterpiece is also an excellent browser extension too for debugging!

John Alcher • Jul 3 '18

$("");

Because it took me almost half a year to realize that it's a function, not a language construct.

ItsASine (Kayla) • Jul 4 '18 • Edited

expect(true).toBe(true);

It's a super useful dumb placeholder when just building out describes, its, beforeAlls, etc in Jasmine tests without actually caring about the legit expectations yet.
It actually failed for me once, which was... enlightening

31547 • Jul 3 '18

typeof(arg);

surprisingly useful

Frederik 👨‍💻➡️🌐 Creemers • Jul 5 '18 • Edited

I don't really have a favorite function, because it's all about using the right one to solve a problem. ut I like functions that make things simpler, so I think I'd pick fetch(). Because before, making HTTP requests from JavaScript looked like this

var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
     document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = this.responseText;
    }
  };
  xhttp.open("GET", "ajax_info.txt", true);
  xhttp.send();

juankOrtiz • Jul 3 '18

Don't know if it's only a function, but ajax in Javascript is something else: the whole idea of a function connecting asynchronously to a server and retrieving data without the need of recharge the entire page is amazing.

Jishnu Vasanth • Jul 3 '18

Arrow function 🤓. this has never been easier.

Josh Cheek • Jul 4 '18

In Ruby, backticks are a function call. And what's especially cool is that heredocuments with backticks call the same function, but with multi line arguments. So you can define them to do other, more interesting things, like call out to other languages! In practice, I mostly use it when experimenting with some slightly tedious external resource, I basically learned PostgreSQL by running them through these kinds of functions.

require 'open3'

def `(str)
  Open3.capture3('php', stdin_data: str).first
end

<<~`PHP` # => "hello cruel world\n"
hello \
<?php echo "cruel" ?> \
world
PHP

Nigel • Jul 5 '18

curry function is probably my prefered one.
For those who don't know its utility, here's a basic example:

const divide = curry((a, b) => a / b)
const divide4By = divide(4)

console.log(divide4by(2))
// 2

I even made my own optimized version 😄
npmjs.com/package/super-curry.

Quentin Caillaud • Jul 4 '18

I don't know why but I just love sprintf() in php ... It's very useful and much more elegant than just endlessly concatenate strings !

And less elegant but really useful once again, die(var_dump()) has a special place in my heart ...

Jundi Alwan • Jul 4 '18

map, filter, reduce, forEach, Array.prototype.some, Array.prototype.every

Working with array in Javascript never been easier.
Love it all!

IsaacLeimgruber • Jul 4 '18

Agreed, high order functions are best

Max Maxymenko • Jul 4 '18 • Edited

Love throwing exceptions around ;)

throw new Exception("...");
throw Error("...");
raise Exception.Create('...');

essic • Jul 3 '18

mine is fmap ...
fmap :: (a -> b) -> F a -> F b
with F being a Functor :-)

I find this one, truly comforting for some reason.

Bertil Muth • Jul 3 '18

I like map.put and map.get. Maps/Dictionaries are incredibly useful data structures that we tend to take for granted nowadays.

Avalander • Jul 3 '18

explain_fork_or_die();

Reference

Abhishek Nair • Jul 5 '18

reduce is my favorite.

IsaacLeimgruber • Jul 4 '18

list.zip (other).map ((a,b) =>...)

everydayGenius • Jul 4 '18

When something went unexpectedly wrong..

panic(error)