One way in which this could have come about is that Math.random wasn’t supported in all relevant browsers when the library author wrote the library. So they had to roll their own randomness with blackjack and hookers. Later the web standards evolved and the author was able to remove the custom code, but now had people relying on his library’s exposing a getRandom function.

[–] Billygoat@piefed.social 26 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You see this kind of stuff in C all the time when a code base supports multiple OSs by using macros.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 16 points 7 hours ago

Yes, though at least with C you have the compiler to optimize the cruft out of your binary and end up with a nice, clean program.

With JavaScript this is going to incur some runtime cost everywhere this library is used, even if it only happens once when getting optimized out by the JIT compiler.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

Pretty sure that math.random is decades old.

[–] meekah@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Pretty sure many codebases running today (even JS ones) are older

[–] Sv443@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Math.random() was always in the spec: https://ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-262_1st_edition_june_1997.pdf

[–] meekah@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 47 minutes ago

Gotta admit, didn't think it was that old

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

How many JS codebases are over 30 years old? Can you name even one?

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

And? I don't know how to check but I'd guess math.random was included from the beginning.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 24 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Pretty sure OP’s image is hyperbole.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

Right. I'd agree this is a thing that happens, I just thought you were addressing this one in particular