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JavaScript JavaScript Basics Working with Strings Display the Value of a String on a Page

Sereta Baldwin
Sereta Baldwin
6,183 Points
Posted by Sereta Baldwin
Sereta Baldwin
6,183 Points

Is there a reason to have the extra variable?

I was just wondering if there was a reason (best practice or something?) as to why the second variable was there. I learnt a bit of Python previously and the teacher on that course always went on about efficient code and how you want to get to the end result with the least amount of code possible. Does that hold true with JavaScript/ all programming languages? Cause I would've thought that the following would've been more efficient, but maybe there are other considerations in JS that I'm not aware of yet:

const stringToShout = prompt(`What do you want to shout?`);
const shoutMessage = `<h2>The message to shout is: ${stringToShout.toUpperCase()}</h2>`;

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to respond! :)

1 Answer

Zimri Leijen
Zimri Leijen
11,835 Points

You could do that, but fewer lines is not always better.

It's good practice to be very explicit with your codes, everything should do exactly what the function says it does, with ideally no side effects.

Clear variable names and function names will help, as well as each function having only a single task.

If you want to be very strict about this, then changing the case to uppercase can be seen as a task, while printing the message is another, unrelated task.

While in this particular example it's splitting hairs, in a real program it will quickly become messy if you combine multiple functionalities within a single function. Especially when later on you call a function from a different context, but forgot about the side effect, and then your function gives you unexpected results.\

In this case, shoutMessage seems clear enough in intention, so it's an edge case.

Sereta Baldwin
Sereta Baldwin
6,183 Points
Sereta Baldwin
Sereta Baldwin
6,183 Points

That was a fabulous answer to my question! I realise in this case it probably doesn't make much difference, but it's really nice to understand these things from the get-go so I can form good habits that might help me down the line (as you mentioned). Thanks so much for taking the time! :)