It's over, Repo. I have the high ground!

Your boyfriend has messed up. Royally. He knows it. You know it. The neighbor knows it. Everyone and their mother knows it!
The words form in your head -
I. Told. You. So.
And then, this other voice, "Don't be a dick, Anju" seemingly comes out of nowhere!
And then, dang! You swallow the sentence.
Congratulations. You’re basically Mother Teresa.
Just... hotter.

Next scenario: The man cuts you off in traffic.
Your hand is already on the horn.
A very specific two-word insult involving his mother… is loading.

And again: Don't be a dick, Anju.
Hand moves away, curse dies in your throat. You’re Buddha baby! You are practically levitating.

Or when you’ve crafted the perfect insult.
You know the kind: Elegant. Perfect. A gift from the universe. Frame-worthy!

And right before you say it… you get a vision of future-you; rocking back and forth at 2:30 a.m., ruminating, feeling guilty. Forever. Until eternity.
The insult is swallowed. The masterpiece lost to history 😭 

Did I mention it already? Yes🙂‍↕️ - I am Jesus. (The Vatican has been notified.)



It whispers… go on the date with that awkward, geeky classmate. He might be the next Jeff Bezos. Think of the future, Anju.
My God, you short-sighted woman!

That voice? That sanctimonious, buzzkill voice?

That's the linter for ya!

There are many flavors of linters.
Golint is your strict asian mum. Checkstyle is your scary PE teacher from 3rd grade.
But today we’re talking about Obi-Wan of the bunch - ESLint. Strict older brother energy. Caring but also kind and responsible.

ESLint runs as its own process. Loosely coupled from your IDE, like Obi-Wan living close to Luke but not exactly in the same part of the desert.


With every debounced keystroke, ESLint quietly parses your JavaScript into an AST. Basically, it takes your itty-bitty const x = 1 and turns it into this… A whole crime scene. Over one variable. Iconic! 😏

{
  "type": "Program",
  "body": [
    {
      "type": "VariableDeclaration",
      "kind": "const",
      "declarations": [
        {
          "type": "VariableDeclarator",
          "id": { "type": "Identifier", "name": "x" },
          "init": { "type": "Literal", "value": 1 }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}



It walks that entire tree, checks every node for rule violations, and fires off context.report(); Which is just ESLint politely trying to say:

"Hey… maybe don’t be a dick."

ESLint does this with hundreds of rules.

Today, we are not incarnating ESLint. Obi-Wan has seen wars. We are building the bite-sized baby Yoda. Adorable. But the Force? Very much present.

Our sabers: catch every rogue console.log left behind in production code.



Here's the thing about our baby linter - he’s not very smart. 

Basically: see the frog → eat the frog.

It visits every single node in the AST. The moment it spots a CallExpression that looks like console.log, it calls report().

function walk(node, visitor) {
  if (!node || typeof node !== "object") return;

  if (visitor[node.type]) {
    visitor[node.type](node);
  }

  for (const key of Object.keys(node)) {
    walk(node[key], visitor);
  }
}

walk(ast, {
  CallExpression(node) {
    noConsoleLog(node, report);
  },
});

Then we wrap it up as a CLI tool using npm link, point it at any repo, and let it loose.


That’s it!
Repo Link

You have your very own bite-sized conscience - ready to torture your repo!



In a nutshell:

ESLint = Obi-Wan.
Your repo = Anakin.
Moral of the story = Obi-Wan(ESlint) stops Anakin from turning into Darth Vader!
Battle cry = It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!

I rest my saber!