Brendan, thanks for the follow up, I also discovered the existence of
bettween, great!
Russel,
ES4 part 2 is what I'd like to avoid too and this is my point indeed.
I am not saying that let, yeld, {block scope}, and destructuring is not
welcome and cool, these are all part already available since ages in Mozilla
browsers extensions, and scripts themselves if type contains the version
attribute.
However, I find a bit paradoxical/hilarious a situation "like this" in 2013
web pages:
<script
type="application/javascript;version=es6"
src="es6code.js"
></script>
<noscript>
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="es5code.js"
></script>
</noscript>
In these days any sort of effort is spent to create polyfills for ES5.1
since this is the step forward the web needed since 2005.
Following the current ES6 direction we won't be able to fill the gap except
including a revisited version of CoffeeScript in every single page in order
to inject a routine per each non compatible browser able to grab scripts
content on the fly and parse them in order to obtain cross platform
compatibility.
An intermediate release with just 3 new constructors such StructType,
ArrayType, and ParallelsArray, could be a much easier target for all
browsers, desktop and mobile.
Same could be the introduction of Object.createClass({... definition ...}),
if class has still any sort of meaning in a prototypal language.
The "let" concept could be introduces in a less breaking way. We do not have
the ability to fake it but we all have the ability to block pieces of code:
{
var local = true;
}
typeof local; // "undefined"
A directive like "use strict,blockscope"; could be friendly and the engine
could change all scoped var into let statements.
This could potentially break some code due difficulty to shim properly the
syntax for older engines, but developers can decide if they want to "take
the risk", avoiding variable names conflicts in the same scope, or not.
As summary, all I am saying is that ES5 and ES5.1 has been the best thing
happened ever to JavaScript as we know it while ES6, and all its new syntax
changes, will take years before it can be widely adopted and improved, and
these years in between will put JavaScript into an even worse position where
JS developers will ask themselves: what is exactly JavaScript ?
Thanks in any case for your answer.
Best Regards,
Andrea Giammarchi
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Russell Leggett
<russell.legg...@gmail.com>wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Andrea Giammarchi
> <andrea.giammar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear All,
> > while I had the opportunity to ask directly to Brendan Eich this
> > question, I would like to ask you 5 minutes of your precious time to
> > understand common concerns from the JS community, summarized under my
> point
> > of view in this post:
> >
> http://webreflection.blogspot.com/2011/10/dear-brendan-here-was-my-question.html
> > I would like to thank you in advance for your time and all possible
> > answers/considerations/questions you may come up with.
>
> Everyone else here is, I'm sure, better qualified to answer that
> question, but here's my take on it. I'm not opposed to some kind of a
> 5.3 release to get some non-breaking performance additions into the
> spec, but I would disagree with the general notion that some of the
> other language changes aren't a priority. Block scoped bindings,
> modularity, and private name objects can't be simulated with the type
> of simple conversion that coffeescript does. Hopefully *something*
> will be done about the complicated "class" pattern so that we don't
> need a million different incompatible libraries. Finally, let's not
> forget all the work done in ES5 involving property attributes that
> might follow the same fate unless the configuration of them is easy as
> seen in the object literal extensions.
>
> As much as every JavaScript advocate usually cringes at the comparison
> of JavaScript to Java, it is a little funny that right now I think
> they are in a little bit of the same situation. The JVM and JavaScript
> are both becoming highly desirable targets of alternative programming
> languages. I think this is awesome, and important, but we can't let
> the language stagnate just because there is innovation in other
> languages that target the platform. Java now looks like a dinosaur and
> people have been predicting that while the JVM will live on, the
> language will start to die. I'd hate to see the same thing happen to
> JavaScript.
>
> On the other hand, I'd also hate to see ES4 part 2.
>
> - Russ
>
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