At this point, I would like to Pause [ II ].

Ever since I have joined my current company which happens to be disrupting the e-commerce space, I have switched from being an ‘on-store’ to an ‘on-line’ shopper. Indeed the lucrative offers, the swiftness provided with one/two day delivery, easy return/exchange feasibilty are the few benefits to name. Oh well, I am not (really) trying to sell you the idea of transacting through online stores, but that was just a subtle attempt.

Sorry(-not-sorry) for digressing, I would now like to start talking about the topic for this discussion. [ I> ].

The empty card board boxes coaxed me to think:

1. Why do I not throw them away?

2. How can I use them?

3. What could be an alternative way for the companies to deliver products?

Let’s get to the questions. One at a time.

Yes, throwing the Empty Card Board Boxes away alongwith the other daily residuals should be the most instinctive action. But the logo of AJIO on the boxes — that kicks in the sense of emotion. Therefore, I refrain myself from doing so.

Which brings me to ponder on what could I do with them, instead. I end up filling the boxes with the books I have read, and place it on the loft. But eventually, when I start living in my own home away from home — I would love to have a library and the books will have a permanent place in the cupboards. And then again, I will not know what to do with the Empty Card Board Boxes.

Keeping my perspectives aside for a while, any other person is quite likely to throw them away. That just piles up the garbage. Some people might even sell them off to the local hawkers.

While I was shifting from one place to another in Bangalore (I have done that too many times now), I needed the Card Board boxes to transport my stuff. And I would have to go to these hawkers and I have bought them for a price ranging from 0 to ₹10. Whether it’s a departmental store or a store in the mall, they do not give a plastic/cloth bag for free. I have been charged from a minimum of ₹ 3 to a maximum of ₹ 20. The boxes are eco-friendly and can be recycled. Yet, they are valued to be of a price lesser than that of a polybag. That thought baffled me.

Items like apparels, accessories, shoes, etc. are packaged in polythenes and then sometimes they have a brand-specific box. These together go into the Ecommerce Company’s Card Board Box. Which means there are layers of additional wrappers. Agreed it might temporarily give us a great feeling while receiving a nicely packaged order. On the downside though, what greater purpose is that serving?

Just like how we are given a choice to take(buy) that poly/cloth bag from the departmental story, why not give the same choice to the online buyers.

This will definitely help reduce

1. the trash size and
2. the packaging costs in the long run.

But that’s just my #ThoughtsOnTheFly — a tiny ripple waiting to create its effect.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
-Aristotle

Having quoted that, I would like to safely say that’s exactly what the double equal to (==) operator sometimes end up doing (using coercion — discussed below) in the world of JavaScript.

It follows the Abstract Equality Comparison algorithm and provides loose equality value-comparisons. On the other hand, triple equals (===) is based on the Strict Equality Comparison algorithm.

For stacking in my internal memory, I have had them saved as === checks for type equality along with the value whereas, == eliminates the type check and dives straight into checking the values of the two variables involved. And thereby I assumed that performance wise == would give faster results. I was wrong. It was a very naive approach.

Double Equals also checks the type. It performs a type conversion when comparing two things. Converting a value from one type to another is often called “type casting,” when done explicitly, and “coercion” when done implicitly (forced by the rules of how a value is to be used). Therefore, Double Equals evaluates using Type Coercion. There are six primitive data types in JavaScript, namely — Null, Boolean, String, Number, Undefined and Symbol (new in ES6). Before initiating the comparison, the compiler checks if any of the operands are coercible and converts it to be of an equivalent type matching to that of the other operand. This increases the time and thus, reduces the performance.

Eg.,

console.log(num == obj); // true
console.log(num == str); // true
console.log(obj == str); // true
console.log(null == undefined); // true

Triple Equals operand does not convert any of the types implicitly. If the operands are of different types, they are deemed unequal. The output is easy to predict and is reliable.

// both false, except in rare cases
console.log(obj == null);
console.log(obj == undefined);

I executed a simple test on https://jsperf.com to check the performance of double v/s triple equals operator. The result showed that Double Equal was 87% slower. Refer the screenshot below.

Therefore, for faster evaluation and to avoid ambiguity and uncertainties in the output, we should prefer using Triple over Double.