JavaScript

On the other hand, I don't think you should add those ever

Sure. But in a sane language doing something totally nonsensical like that is an error, and in a statically typed language it’s a compiler error. It doesn’t just silently do weird shit.
- Agreed! Unfortunately these maddening behaviors were kind of set in stone several decades ago, and it has been (correctly) decided "Don't break the web", these weird quirks are kept in modern interpreters/compilers.
  
  It's actually quite interesting to read through the logic to follow when implementing an interpreter:
  
  https://262.ecma-international.org/13.0/#sec-object.prototype.tostring
- a sane language
  
  JavaScript
  
  Pick one.
- What's a sane, dynamically typed language?
Onfuscators probably use it though, so no spec ever will be able to get rid of this crap.
- Can I vote for obsfuscators not holding a language hostage?

Use TypeScript, and nonsensical things like adding arrays to objects will be compile-time errors.

Yup. The libraries underneath will still allow nonsense at runtime, though, and it will now be harder to see, so it's a partial solution as done in standard practice.

An all-TypeScript stack, if you could pull it off, would be the way to go.
- Most libraries have TypeScript types these days, either bundled directly with the library (common with newer libraries), or as part of the DefinitelyTyped project.
- So a strictly typed language.. I think those already exist.
- The libraries underneath will still allow nonsense at runtime
  
  Only if you use a badly written library. Most libraries have types provided by DefinitelyTyped. Those who don’t are (in my experience) so tiny that you probably aren’t using them; or, if you really wanted, can check yourself.
  
  In the end, if you encounter a bug, it’ still 99% of the time not a library’s fault, even if it’s written in plain JS.
By that logic what we really need is a modernization of Ada, where there are no compiler warnings and anything that would generate one in another language is instead a compiler error, everything is strongly typed, etc, etc.

If you aren't familiar with Ada, just imagine Pascal went to military school.
- Pascal went to military school.
  
  I'm not in love with the idea, but a language that cuts out the BS has a sudden appeal when on a group/team project.

I come back to watch this every few years. It's so good!
How do I know so little about programming yet this is still so funny?

Maybe the neuroscientists have some insight:
- You can tell that they find the answers absurd and the WAT memes are universally funny.
I’ve seen this guy referenced twice today. If only he knew how to write instead of giving talks…

In node, I get the same result in both cases. "[object Object]"

It's calling the toString() method on both of them, which in the array case is the same as calling .join(",") on the array. For an empty array, that results in an empty string added to "[object Object]" at either end in the respective case in the picture.

Not sure how we'd get 0 though. Anybody know an implementation that does that? Browsers do that maybe? Which way is spec compliant? Number([]) is 0, and I think maybe it's in the spec that the algorithm for type coercion includes an initial attempt to convert to Number before falling back to toString()? I dunno, this is all off the top of my head.

The inspector REPL evaluates as a statement-with-value (like eval), so the {} at the beginning is considered an empty block, not an object. This leaves +[], which is 0. I don't know what would make Node differ, however.

Edit: Tested it myself. It seems Node prefers evaluating this as an expression when it can, but explicitly using eval gives the inspector behavior:
- So there's yet another level of quirkery to this bullshit then, it seems. 😆 Nice digging! 🤝
  
  I also noticed that if you surround the curlies with parentheses, you get the same again:
  
  > eval('{} + []') 0 > eval('({}) + []') '[object Object]'

Just wait until OP learns about cross product of matrices.

mfw non-commutativeness

This is why I try my damnedest not to write in weakly typed languages.

string + object makes no logical sense, but the language will be like "'no biggie, you probably meant string + string so let's convert the object to string"! And so all hell breaks loose when the language's assumption is wrong.

You don't necessarily need types for that kind of thing though, a strict linter that flags that code works just as well
Some automatic conversion is fine.

a=3+0.2

print("Hello {name}. You are {age} years old")

That kind of thing. But the principle of least surprise definitely applies. If you get to the point where you're adding two booleans and a string, I feel like the language should at least say something. At least until the technology exists for it to physically reach out of your screen and slap you.

It's best not to touch anything web related, lest you want to go mad. It's like the elder scrolls or laying eyes on some cosmic horror creature. Tbf this also goes for C++

At least C++ build tools are easier than modern JS.
- I don't think "easier" is the right way to compare here. The C++ build tools will absolutely rewrite your code into something you can't expect to guess, but it doesn't make them hard to "use".
Keep to sane environments to keep sane.

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

Mandatory link

Who would use that kind of type coercion? Who? I want to see his face.

I take this as less of a "I can't use this intuitive feature reliably" thing and more of a "the truth table will bite you in the ass when you least expect it and/or make a mistake" thing.
- Just use a formatter. It'll show you that the second one is two statements:
  
  {} (the empty block)
  
  +[] coerce an empty array to a number: new Number(new Array())
It's not even the coercion that is the problem here. The types are already bad by themselves.

GIGO

I've read different defenses for JavaScript for cases like this, which usually runs somewhere from you shouldn't be doing that anyway all the way up to if you just understood the language better you'd know why. While I agree with both of those points strongly as general principles, JavaScript also violates the principle of least surprise enough to make it concerning.

For what it's worth, I do like JavaScript. I really don't think that there is any perfect programming language.
- I really don't think that there is any perfect programming language.
  
  You'd be wrong 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
- JavaScript, like some other languages of the time, was designed with the Robustness Principle in mind. Arguably the wrong end of the Robustness Principle, but still.
  
  That is, it was designed to accept anything that wasn't a syntax error (if not a few other things besides) and not generate run-time errors unless absolutely necessary. The thinking was that the last thing the user of something written in JavaScript wants is for their browser to crash or lock up because something divided by zero or couldn't find an object property.
  
  Also it was originally written in about five minutes by one guy who hadn't had enough sleep. (I may have misremembered this part, but I get the feeling I'm not too far off.)