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Discussion on: Dice Rolling Program

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000

You don't need to have a function that returns another function. You can simplify it to this:

function d(sides) {
  return Math.floor(Math.random() * sides + 1);
}

And use it with this:

console.log(d(20));
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pentacular profile image
pentacular

That's true, but his code wants to call functions directly.

Also, why are you adding 1 and then flooring?

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000

I am adding one because Math.random() returns a float between 0 and 1, but it never includes 1, so you could never get 20 without adding 1.

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pentacular profile image
pentacular

Why not use Math.ceil?

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000 • Edited

Because some dice don't have zero while other's do. So we would need to switch on different dice.

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pentacular profile image
pentacular

But you're always adding one, so you'll never get zero ...

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000

Exactly. We would remove that but we would need to switch between Math.ceil and Math.floor.

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pentacular profile image
pentacular

Making a function more complex in order to make it simpler to do something the function does not do is not very sensible. :)

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000

What if we just did something like this:

function d(sides, hasZero = false) {
  return hasZero ? Math.ceil(Math.random() * sides) : Math.floor(Math.random() * sides);
}
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pentacular profile image
pentacular

If you want to generate integers in a range, you might as well just do that.

But the first thing to check are the requirements for this use case.

I believe that none of these dice include zero. :)

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aaronmccollum profile image
Aaron McCollum

Mind blown. Thank you all! I'm just now getting into ES6 and shorthand functions etc. I just love how there are ways to do in 10 lines what I did in ~50-60 lines. Incredible.

I'll be referencing this when I update the code in the next few weeks. Thank you both!