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Laurie
Laurie

Posted on

What's your favorite addition to ES2015+

If you're unfamiliar with ECMAScript I have an explanation here

I'd love to hear about everyone's favorite piece of ES2015+ syntax and how it makes your JavaScript development experience better!

I'll start with mine, destructuring assignment! I love that I can do this

({data}) => {
    data.item
}
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Instead of this

(data) => {
    data.data.item
}
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Top comments (36)

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jrios profile image
Jake Rios

Using the spread operator to append/prepend elements to an array. It also returns the array rather than the length of the array, which I've never found that useful.


let numbers = [1, 2, 3]

numbers = [...numbers, 4]

// [1, 2, 3, 4]

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Spread operator is wonderful. What's crazy to me is how many different ways it can be used. Like arrays vs. objects.

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kenbellows profile image
Ken Bellows

oh man, Object spread is the best thing... maybe I should change my answer πŸ€”

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itsjzt profile image
Saurabh Sharma

I wish there could be such an easy way to remove elements from array.

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

Async/await is so great. No more callback hell ever again.

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jckuhl profile image
Jonathan Kuhl

First time I used Async/Await was a Vue project with a Java Servlet backend. Plopped await in front of the fetch that connected with my back end, and async in front of vue's mounted() method and squealed in delight when my component rendered with my data base information for the first time.

Multiple moments of triumph at once, first use Async/Await, first success with a servlet, and was still new to Vue.JS.

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anastely profile image
Anas T

Example?

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

Let's say, you need to sequentially resolve three promises. Callback hell looks like this:

function asyncJob(callback) {
  asyncA(xyz, (err, buffer) => {
    if (err) { throw err; }
    asyncB(buffer, (err, result) => {
      if (err) { throw err; }
      asyncC(result, (err, response) => {
        if (err) { throw err; }
        if (response.ok()) { return callback(); }
        throw new Error('Could not send result');
      });
    })
  });
}

Now the same with Promises:

const asyncJob = () => asyncA(xyz)
.then((buffer) => asyncB(buffer))
.then((result) => asyncC(result))
.then((response) => {
  if (response.ok()) { return Promise.resolve(); }
  throw new Error('Could not send result');
});

Reads a lot better, doesn't it? Still, it's pretty terse and has a lot of repetition, so async/await is a big improvement when it comes to reading flow:

const asyncJob = async () => {
  const buffer = await asyncA(xyz);
  const result = await asyncB(buffer);
  const response = await asyncC(result);
  if (!response.ok()) {
    throw new Error('Could not send result');
  }
};
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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

We call the second thenable hell.
I'm a fan of Promise.all as a solution, but I acknowledge async/await is a great option too.

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

.then(...) still takes a callback. So while it reads much more congruently, it's basically still good old callback hell, just in a better suit and with better manners. Async/await is a game changer when it comes to readability of asynchronous code.

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Ah callback hell. Such fun.

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maxwell_dev profile image
Max Antonucci

Arrow functions. I love the clean, simple syntax for managing functions. We can go from this:

const add = function(a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

To just this:

const add = (a, b) => a + b;

There are learning and readability curves here, but it's not bad and I think well worth it.

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Always a solid choice!

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

Definitely destructuring, spread, arrow functions, template literals for string interpolation, generators (even if I'm not currently using them), array includes, async/await. Curious to see how async interation works

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

You can't have 5 favorites rhymes! Just kidding, love it.

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

hahahah ok, so if I have to choose one I'm going to say destructuring.
You can live without spread, arrow functions, literals, generators, includes and asnc await.

Destructuring in function arguments makes the code much more readable instead of having either a super long list of parameters or options as an argument.

Destructuring FTW

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jckuhl profile image
Jonathan Kuhl

Destructuring

So before ES2015 and destructuring we had this:

var width = this.state.width;
var height = this.state.height;
var position = this.state.position;

or for arrays

var width = this.state[0];
var height = this.state[1];
var position = this.state[2];

Now it's prettier with

const { width, height, position } = this.state;

or for arrays:

const [ width, height, position ] = this.state;

It comes really handy when iterating over Object.entries, which gives you an array like:

[ [key1, value1], [key2, value2] . . . . [keyN, valueN] ]

Because you can do this:

const entries = Object.entries(obj);
for([key, value] of entries) {
   // do something with the key and value
}

Or this

Object.entries(obj).filter(([key, value]) => {
    if(value > 10)
       return key;
});

It's nice, like python packing/unpacking:

value1, value2 = sys.argv[1:2]

I mean, sure it can get ugly:

const {
   width,
   height,
   position,
   color,
   font,
   kerning,
   linespacing,
   border,
   background,
   textcontent
} = this.state;

but that goes for anything in programming.

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Definitely my favorite!

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cathodion profile image
Dustin King

Class syntax.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett πŸŒ€ • Edited

I am looking forward to the up and coming class field syntax to fix the broken syntax that is class syntax. Syntax πŸ˜‚

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Oh yes, definitely an awesome addition.

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kenbellows profile image
Ken Bellows

Ooooph tough decision... probably the combination of proper native iterators, the for ... of loop, and generators, which all combine together to amazing effect.

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

I watched an awesome talk on generators last week. Not something I’d used before!

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kenbellows profile image
Ken Bellows

They're super cool and can really clean up your code in some cases, especially when you get into async iterators/generators. My second article ever on dev.to was actually about iterators, generators, symbols, for ... of, and how it all fits together!

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Oh awesome. Will check it out!

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davidchase profile image
David Chase

How about Proxies and Map/Sets ?

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laurieontech profile image
Laurie

Ooh, that's a new answer!

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davidchase profile image
David Chase

Yah trying to mix it up πŸ˜‚

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett πŸŒ€

But I said metaprogramming so that is the category that proxies sit under .. anyway here's how to break JavaScript with proxies.

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jaffparker profile image
Jaff Parker

Spread, destructuring, arrow functions, async-await - they made me actually see JavaScript for what it is instead of just a browser scripting language πŸ˜ƒ now I'm just waiting for the pipeline operator

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itsjzt profile image
Saurabh Sharma

native support for import/export πŸ˜‚ and certainly those bacticks

`Hello ${World}`

and

styled.div`
  color: blue
`