cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39334581
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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It's object-oriented; you can assign this to a named variable.
In that case the full thing would be
const fun = () => {}Yeah for whatever reason, FE devs want to make everything a const. It's like a religious belief or something, it's really kinda weird.
const fun = () => { const something = "whatever" const array = []; array.push(someting)
for (const thing of array) { if (thing === 'whatever') blah(thing) } }
Semicolons? Optional. Which quotes you should use? Whatever you feel like! But you must declare things as a const wherever possible! Even if it's an array that you're going to be changing, declare it as a const because you should know that you can push things into a const array, and since it's possible to declare it as a const, you must declare it as a const.
Why is this? Nobody knows, but it's important to FE devs that you use const.
The reason is very simple, performance. If a value doesn't need to be changed, don't declare it as mutable. This isn't just a front-end thing btw.
Pushing something onto an array isn't changing the array? It's not changing the reference to the array, but from a style standpoint it doesn't make sense.
And if you're declaring a const within the scope of a function, it's still allocating memory when it enters the scope and disposing it when it leaves the scope, same as a variable. There's no performance benefit to do this.
Something like const CONSTANT_VALUE = "This never changes" has a performance benefit and is actually how other languages use constants. The value will always be the same, the compiler understands this and can optimize accordingly. If you're declaring an iterator or the result of calling a webservice to be const it'll be a different value every time it runs that code, so it's not something a compiler can optimize. In style terms, it's a value that's different every time you get to that line of code, so why would you want to call it constant?
You're comment indicates the FE dev obsession with always using const stems from a misunderstanding of how computers work. But of course many religious beliefs originate from a misunderstanding of the world. Whatever man, I just make it a const to make the linter happy, because it's dumb FE bullshit LOL.
Lol.
So you're arguing for writing things as they seem, not the way that computers treat them?
Maybe rethink this.
A constant inside a function is not constant to the computer. It's only constant within the scope of the function. So it's not constant to the computer since every time the function is called the "constant" will have a different value.
Do you even know what a real constant is?
You maybe need to rethink some things.
That variable is only created when the function is run, and it holds a constant value for the entirety of its lifetime.
It is literally constant from the perspective of the computer executing it. You're the one adding an extra layer of expectation here.