Does JavaScript need method overloading?

re: Does JavaScript need method overloading?

Jonah Dempcy — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:30:42 GMT

I posted an article about this, also discussing John Resig's version and offering an alternative. My proposed solution may fall prey to some of the same problems you mention but it offers the nifty ability to overload functions with type signatures, not just based on the number of parameters.

I think some method overloading is nice, like how jQuery or MooTools will sometimes allow you to provide the String id of an HTML object or a reference to the object itself. But, it certainly isn't a necessary feature and adding additional overhead and boilerplate code for defining functions isn't ideal. So, perhaps the solution proposed in my article is best suited for theoretical discussion rather than production use.

Javascript Closures...

Jay Kimble — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:39:14 GMT

I was reading this post by Bertrand Le Roy . And in many respects I agree with Bertrand and also with

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re: Does JavaScript need method overloading?

Sean Kinsey — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:06:37 GMT

Here is a simple solution that supports multiple signatures differentiated by types, and it has a low overhead as well..

re: Does JavaScript need method overloading?

Joe Chung — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:14:36 GMT

I am a big fan of IntelliSense but not at the expense of a programming language's expressiveness.

I wonder if there would be a way for currying to support overloading methods by arity.

Maybe use pattern matching like in F# to support overloading methods by arity and parameter datatype.

re: Does JavaScript need method overloading?

AndrewSeven — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:34:01 GMT

I don't feel any need for hacked-in* overloading, but I do think its a good thing to be adding to the next version.

re: Does JavaScript need method overloading?

Bo Breiting — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:43:57 GMT

This sounds like an all too familiar road to me. JavaScript has suffered a long history of hacks and personal interpretations that has lead to clouded standards and unstable solutions causing more and more developers to turn away from client side development and towards server side solutions for stability. Now with the dawn of web2.0 clients are growing feature rich again and once again the focus is on client side scripting which has finaly lead to some at least half decent environments with IntelliSense making client side development and debugging easier. The last thing we need now are more individual problem solving and hacks.

re: Does JavaScript need method overloading?

David Fauber — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:02:07 GMT

I agree with your take. Its something that'll be nice to have as a first class feature of the language. (this is actually one of the few ES4 things I'm looking forward to having) Its nowhere near a big enough deal for me to want a ES3 workaround, though.