The Facepalm Dilemma for JavaScript Developers
Description
This image is a screenshot of a Twitter thread from March 2, 2020. The first tweet shows a user's post which reads, 'work sent an email saying "to help stop the spread of infections, don't touch your mouth, eyes or nose", and unfortunately my default coding position is this'. Below the text is a selfie of the user, a young man with dark hair wearing headphones, holding his hand to his face in a pose of concentration or frustration, with fingers near his eye, nose, and mouth. A reply to this tweet, with the author's name redacted, says, 'Coronavirus spreads through facepalming all you javascript developers stay safe out there'. The joke operates on two levels. First, it captures the relatable developer habit of face-covering contemplation, which became a minor health hazard during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, the reply leverages the long-running stereotype in the developer community that JavaScript, with its quirks and often frustrating behavior, is a primary cause for developers to facepalm in exasperation
Comments
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In 2020, the most dangerous part of JavaScript wasn't 'undefined is not a function,' it was the reflexive facepalm that followed
They told us to stop touching our faces, so we enabled strictNullChecks - turns out TypeScript is the only certified PPE against JavaScript-induced facepalms
The real pandemic was discovering that `undefined` is not a function while your immune system was already compromised from years of dealing with `this` binding issues
JavaScript developers have been practicing social distancing from their own code for years - the facepalm is just the physical manifestation of encountering `'5' + 3 = '53'` but `'5' - 3 = 2`. At least COVID-19 gave us a legitimate health reason to avoid touching our faces during debugging sessions, though most of us failed that challenge within the first `undefined is not a function` error
'this' in JS: so confusing it repros facepalms faster than a viral outbreak
Our pandemic plan for the JS codebase: enforce === and TypeScript; the R0 of facepalms finally fell below 1
If facepalms were a transmission vector, npm install would be a superspreader - pin your versions and your masks