Re: How can I have one function call another function dynamically?

Richard Cornford wrote:
> In general, the abysmal standard of average web authoring is not a
> justification for adopting low standards. Though it does seem to be a
> common justification used by those that have low standards and are too
> idle to attempt to do better.

I agree with you re adoption of standards. But practicality dictates
that the lowest level of standards begins at the environment in which
your application is to be run. Always takes me back to html and
javascript and the markup's and programming language's capabilities...
makes all else irrelevant, IMO.

> Yet if you look into the archives of comp.lang.javascirpt you will find
> thousands of examples, often created in response to a discussion of the
> pertinent issues and the results subject to critical peer review. So all
> you are saying is people who have done some work to acquire their
> understanding don't feel much sympathy for individuals who cannot be
> bothered to do something as simple as compose an effective google
> search.

Google is predicated on the user's knowledge. I cannot enter search
words that I am ignorant of. Google's guesses at what I meant to
search for are predicated on how ignorant the last 8,000 or so people
were also ignorant of. That said, google is a good tool for
researching programming errors. Before one gets to that error, though,
what would one search for?

> And I stand by my belief that people who want to develop javascript will
> provide most 'value' by learning the language they are attempting to
> use.

And this includes learning what is wasted energy vs what is time well
spent like learning how to use eval to achieve the desired results...

> > but have a requirement to fill. And they _will_ find
> > a solution. If not one published by an expert javascript
> > developer, then one published by someone using eval.

I use eval because I am working on fulfilling a functionality
requirement.

> It is as bad to be perceiving the discussion of "advanced" techniques as
> directed towards reducing code by a few characters and running
> fractionally faster as it is to attribute it to no more than the
> demonstration of the ability to use those techniques. In reality the
> application of the "advanced" techniques, and the related discussion of
> the subject, is mostly concerned with software design issues.

The thing that kills me in software design/development is that people
start trying to reuse code for the sake of saying that they have
resused code. If the code is bad, why bother building on it? I have
seen people become experts because they make some bad code work. If
they were truly experts, they would have scrapped the notion of
building on bad code because it wastes so much more time to train a
staff of developers to do something the wrong way.

> That is but one aspect of software design that can be more effectively
> addressed with a more complete understanding of the implementation
> language. And much of research into software design is primarily geared
> towards easing software maintenance, having identified that as a
> significant expense in the process, but achieving that as much by
> designing out the need for as much maintenance as making the work of
> maintenance easier.
>
> Richard.
Received on Tue Oct 18 02:58:02 2005