+1 too all this
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Mikeal Rogers <[email protected]> wrote: > What is the goal of this? > > If the goal is to get people to stop complaining, don't bother, people will > always complain. So long as there is a TC-39 there will be people that strive > to be armchair language designers and rail against any actual work. > > The core problem is that people who work nearly full time on designing a > language are necessarily out of touch with people using it, and the people > using it are ill equipped to balance the priorities all all the parties > involved in designing it. > > I think a better strategy is for TC-39 to state definitively what is *not* > currently working on or is of a very low priority. This would allow the > community of people using JavaScript to tackle those problems more directly > rather than just waiting. At some point in the future TC-39 can adopt or > ratify behavior that has proved itself in the community. I know this process > is eluded to often but I don't think you understand how much momentum gets > sucked out of the community when they are under the impression that new > behavior will be handed down from TC-39 and that their work may fall in > conflict or out of date. > > The recent discussion about Object.isObject is a great example. If this isn't > happening please state so definitely so that we can rally around existing > work (underscore) or build something new. > > To be honest, creating better ways for developers to get directly involved in > this process is a bad idea. You'll either be bombarded with opinions that > haven't been well thought through or you'll gain a crowd of enthusiastic > people that stick around long enough to forget their old priorities and come > to the same compromises you come to already. It might be beneficial to invite > a few people from the developer community to meetings and to rotate them out > so that no one becomes truly intrenched in the process. Let's not delude > ourselves in to thinking that the only barrier to being a part of the current > process is technical and can be solved with indexing or a bulletin board. > > -Mikeal > > On May 9, 2012, at May 9, 20124:46 PM, Axel Rauschmayer wrote: > >> I’m seeing quite a bit of anti-TC39 sentiment out there and I don’t think >> it’s fair. Some examples (paraphrasing): >> >> - “TC39 doesn’t care about web developers and/or doesn’t understand web >> development.” >> - “TC39 ignores what the people want and designs ‘by committee’.” >> - “TC39 is moving too slowly, does too little.” >> >> The following are counter-points to those opinions: >> >> - If you want to do good design, it is impossible to please everybody. >> Design by popular vote is worse than design by committee. That’s why we have >> representative democracies. >> >> - Evolving the language while remaining backward compatible is a hard >> problem. I like what TC39 has done so far. The main goal must be to have as >> clean a language as possible in the future. Doing so while being backward >> compatible means that the transition can be a little messy (several similar >> constructs existing in parallel etc.), but that is unavoidable. One doesn’t >> need to understand all the gory details as long is things are simple *in >> practice*. >> >> - TC39 has a lot of responsibility and must keep many parties happy. The >> payoff, however, is huge: I’m not aware of any other programming language >> that is as open and has as many different, yet highly compatible, >> implementations. Hence, moving at a deliberate pace is a good thing. Compare >> with how much progress Java has made over the years (in an environment that >> is much simpler than JavaScript’s). In that light ES.next’s progress looks >> quite good. >> >> - I find es-discuss quite open and appreciate it as a resource. I see TC39 >> members expend a lot of energy and patience in answering as many questions >> as possible. Every now and then a question won’t be answered. But that is >> understandable, as es-discuss is not a support hotline that has to cover >> 100% of the questions. >> >> What could be improved: >> >> - Make it easier to search the mailing list archives. Might be a minor >> thing, but it would really help. I wonder how Brendan always finds those old >> threads that are relevant to a particular topic. >> >> - Possibly add an FAQ. This could be as simple as collecting all emails that >> have long-term explanatory value. >> >> - I like the idea of having a forum what some people can suggest ideas and >> everyone can vote on them. One would need both up-votes and down-votes, as >> there is bound to be a lot of troll material. Such a forum can only ever >> have an advisory role. But it gives developers the opportunity to vent their >> feelings and it gives TC39 popular feedback (including ideas that might not >> have come up before). By bundling requests, traffic is reduced. >> >> - Some complaints are about evolving the standard library (including >> collection types). I’ve seen Brendan hint at a strategy for doing so, but >> I’d love to read more about it. >> >> Axel >> >> -- >> Dr. Axel Rauschmayer >> [email protected] >> >> home: rauschma.de >> twitter: twitter.com/rauschma >> blog: 2ality.com >> >> _______________________________________________ >> es-discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
