Programmer Humor

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If you run this JavaScript function on the 31st of a month, the result will be a month off. The best part is that this is the intended behvaior. JavaScript is a cursed language. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/programmerhumor@lemmy.ml

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function getMonthName(monthNumber) {
  const date = new Date();
  date.setMonth(monthNumber - 1);

  return date.toLocaleString([], { month: 'long' });
}

The current day of month will have an impact on the behavior of this method. Conceptually it will add the number of days given by the current day of the month to the 1st day of the new month specified as the parameter, to return the new date. For example, if the current value is 31st January 2016, calling setMonth with a value of 1 will return 2nd March 2016. This is because in 2016 February had 29 days.

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[+] railsdev@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, the flip side to that is that sometimes you need to add one month to a date, because that sometimes how human systems are written.
By not providing a function that does that, you're just pushing the confusion down to the developer, who is more likely to make terrible errors in the process, get frustrated, or use one of N different competing libraries, each of which chose a different answer.

Omitting functionality that can behave unintuitively in certain circumstances means leaving out a lot of functionality that people need.

Like, "decimal numbers" go pathological in certain cases. So do Unicode characters. Don't even bother thinking about connecting to the network.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 year ago

Exactly, it's better to not have these sorts of "conveniences" than to create weird pitfalls. I find a lot of crazy Js behaviors are ultimately a result of Js trying to be accommodating of inputs that should just be straight up rejected.