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Discussion on: Sh*tpost: can we stop saying "syntactic sugar"?

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leob

I think 'syntactic sugar' is indeed a useful term (IMO) for a commonly used technique or pattern in software development.

You could say 'syntactic sugar' means putting a "sweet" or easy-to-use layer on top of a complicated piece of 'machinery'. Sort of "sugarcoating" that piece of complexity.

It's called 'sugar' because it's not changing the essence of the 'dish' (the underlying machinery is still there) but only making it taste 'sweeter'.

Async/await is a good example, if you take it away then you get to see all of the 'ugly' (well not really) promise stuff, using async/await hides that away from view but underneath it's still there.