In JavaScript they have const, var and let which control how things are stored. Every language has these. Using Frontier, I got used to having persistent data storage. If I created something in the object database, the kernel took care of persisting it. I could just use it like memory that was always there, and didn't have to worry about saving it to files. I find all the time I wish that JavaScript had this. I think I may have finally figured out how that might work. #
Here's the idea. A new storage attribute called persist. It can only apply to global objects. You could write this:#
Next time the app runs it already has a value. Unlike with var or const the initialization code only runs when there is no persist object named serialnum (i.e. the first time the app runs with this value declared).#
It would be easy to implement this in the language interpreter. It might even be possible with proxies. I don't understand them well enough yet to know. I also think you could do it with somewhat less elegant code using an NPM package. #
Matt Terrenzio asks "Persist where?" My response: Somewhere. Anywhere really. Probably in a file on the local hard drive, stored in JSON. It could be in a database or in the cloud. It should be something that the developer can override, and it should default to something simple. #