Company
Date Published
Author
Jessica Stokes
Word count
890
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

The author reflects on their experiences with JavaScript and Ruby, particularly how Ruby's ActiveSupport extensions provide an intuitive, English-like syntax for time calculations, contrasting it with JavaScript's more complex methods like Moment.js. Despite their discomfort with monkey patching, they sought ways to simplify JavaScript's syntax, ultimately experimenting with ES6 features and Babel's experimental function bind syntax. This led to the creation of "Metrick," an npm package that uses a combination of these approaches to allow for intuitive unit conversions in JavaScript. Metrick offers a flexible structure, enabling users to define custom units and perform various conversions while maintaining readability and avoiding monkey patching. Through this exploration, the author expresses excitement about the potential for innovation and flexibility within programming languages, particularly in JavaScript.