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Really? The variable name lengths? Not that the code is clearer as:

    const te = document.createElement('table');
    document.body.appendChild(te);
    [
        ['one',  'two',  'three'],
        ['four', 'five', 'six'  ],
    ].forEach((r, i) => {
        const re = te.insertRow(i);
        r.forEach((c, j) => {
            re.insertCell(j).innerText = c;
        })
    });

My personal stance on short variable names is that they are fine as long as their scope is very limited, which is the case here. Rather, the "crime" to me is an overuse of rather pointless variables as the majority of them were only used once.

Disclaimer: I have not tested the code and I only write JavaScript once every few years and when I do I am unhappy about it.

jonathrg 2 days ago [ - ]

This is not an improvement. Having named variables for things is good actually. They will need to be declared again immediately once you want to modify the code. insertCell(i).innerText = c is a nonsense statement, it should be 2 lines for the 2 operations

ninjin a day ago [ - ]

I disagree, but maybe it is a cultural thing for those of us that are more used to functional styles of programming? I was taught method chaining as a style by a seasoned JavaScript and Ruby programmer myself and I do not find the semantics confusing. "Create X with Y set to 17 and Z to 4711" can be either on one or three lines to me, as long as the method calls are clear and short enough.

As for variables, I (again personally) find it taxing to have many variables in scope, so I do net see their presence as a universal good. If we instead simply use expressions, then there is no need to concern yourself with whether the variable will come into play later on. Thus, I think it increases clarity and favour that over the ease of future modification argument you propose (heck, I would argue that you get better diffs even if you force the variable declaration into a future modification).

As for bikeshedding this piece of code further, if I steal some ideas from chrismorgan [1] and embedding-shape [2] who appear to be way more seasoned JavaScript programmers than me:

    const $t = document.createElement('table');
    for (const r of
            [
                ['one',  'two',  'three'],
                ['four', 'five', 'six'  ],
            ]) {
        const $r = $t.insertRow();
        for (const e of r)
            $r.insertCell().innerText = e;
    };
    document.body.append($t);

This is now rather minimal and the logic is easy (for me) to follow as the scopes are minimal and namespace uncluttered. It was a rather fun little exercise for a language I am not overly familiar with and I learned a few tricks and perspectives.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45782938

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45781591

matt_kantor 2 days ago [ - ]

Looks like your code inserts a new row for every cell.

ninjin 2 days ago [ - ]

Cheers! Fixed.