thinking_about_javascript.md

So, I create a generator and wrap it in an event emitter

const util = require('util')
const EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter

// declare a generator that counts forever
function *Generator(n) {
    while (true) yield n++
}

function Iterator() {
    // initialize a new generator at 0
    let c = Generator(0)
    this.inc = function() {
        // emit an event, bangbang, with next value from generator
        this.emit('bangbang', c.next())
    }
}

// turn Iterator into an event emitter
util.inherits(Iterator, EventEmitter)

Now I instantiate the event emitter and attach a listener that calls a never ending stream forth from the generator, and away we go

let iterator = new Iterator()

iterator.addListener('bangbang', function(n) {
    console.log(n)
    iterator.inc()
})

iterator.inc()

This ^ will result in a stack overflow. But, if I attach iterator.addListener like so

iterator.addListener('bangbang', function(n) {
    setTimeout(function() {
        console.log(n)
        iterator.inc()
    }, 0)
})

it will go on forever.

So then I realized...

function recurse(n) {
    console.log(n)
    setTimeout(function() {
        recurse(n+1)
    }, 0)
}

recurse(0)

JavaScript can do things like this ^, your job as a JavaScript programmer is to get return values out of this process. That's what streams, promises, callback, generators are all doing in JavaScript, just trying to get you your return value.