Hello, everyone 👋. I am a newcomer when it comes to JavaScript. I come from an OOP background (C# and Java). I’ve recently learned that ES6 has a class keyword that preforms similarly (but not exactly) to common OOP languages. Normally I would be inclined to use this feature in my projects; however, it came to my attention that the usage of class in JavaScript seems to be heavily discussed (mostly in a negative light). My questions to this community are:

  • Should it be used often, sparingly, or be outright avoided?
  • What are its advantages and disadvantages?
  • Are there specific cases where the usage of class excels?

Please share your thoughts.

  • atomic peach@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The class keyword exists for a reason and it has a perfectly fine use case when you need to make use of creating new objects. I think it may be disliked because people come over from Java assuming you need to define everything as objects/classes when we have modules and other methods of doing the same thing with a little bit less clutter. I recommend reading up on the underlying functionality and how classes and objects work compared to modules.

    • heartlessevil@lemmy.oneEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      It’s disliked because it uses a “class” keyword but it isn’t a class. JavaScript has prototypes, not classes.

      • object_Object@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I somehow feel like there’s an allergy of sort towards classes in general in JavaScript/TypeScript. Many projects I’ve worked on gravitate towards more functional/plain-old-objects sort of paradigm and it feels like classes are avoided just because they don’t feel like idiomatic JS.