As always, very well put, Douglas. On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 16:53, Douglas Crockford <[email protected]> wrote: > ECMAScript has a large set of problems. I think that the fact that 'function' > has eight letters is at the bottom of the priority list. And yet, I am open to > the possibility of introducing new syntactic sugar to the language to make > the expression of functions more elegant. > > I look at ECMAScript as serving four groups: > > 1. The beginners for whom the language was designed. > 2. The web developers who owe their livelihoods to the language. > 3. The scientists who will use the language for greatness. > 4. Language designers and critics.
I think that there is a very subtle way in which Ruby's blocks are perceived, largely because they involve less ceremony than JavaScript's functions. Making the expression of functions more elegant will go a long way towards making newcomers grok their importance and power, as well as a lot of typing (and visual clutter) for those of us in the second group. > Some of the proposals and wishes for new syntax are alarming, in that they > appear to be increasing the problem set, rather than reducing it. For > example, > the language has a confusion between blocks and object literals. Any new > syntax > should reduce or eliminate this confusion, not amplify it. +1. > I want to make the language easier to beginners to learn, streamlining the > syntax, replacing automatic semicolon insertion with statements that are > by design semicolon free. Some of us are already writing JavaScript this way :) The newline elision thing is unnecessarily persnickety, though. _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
