Thank you Mark, for the GC hint proposal: it matches what was my
(admittedly naive) intuition. And thanks, Allen, for the thorough
description of GC issues. Very helpful!
Some points, in no particular order:
- It seems likely to me that the implementation complexity of {private
symbols, weakmaps} will be on par with the implementation complexity of
{weakmaps with hints}.
- Reflectivity of all property names is a useful feature that should not be
discarded lightly.
- Simplicity in the object model is an advantage for everyone attempting to
reason about objects.
- Having one kind of symbol is easier to conceptualize than two. Indeed,
private symbols could be an attractive nuisance if they lead developers
toward over-securing their abstractions.
- Unique symbols provide sufficient encapsulation for software-engineering
purposes.
- It is my conjecture that high-integrity privacy will be required by a
small fraction of projects (such as SES sandboxing engines), and the
developer audience for these features will be "power-users". In this case,
private symbols might be an over-optimization of a corner case (although
it's an important corner!).
- It looks to me like much of the work to make ES6 future compatible with
private symbols has already been done.
- During the ES7 design process, there will be plenty of user experience
with weakmaps and proxies to draw from. This should make the private
symbol decision much clearer.
{ Kevin }
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