On 15 February 2014 21:06, Allen Wirfs-Brock <[email protected]> wrote: > On Feb 15, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Brendan Eich wrote: >> C. Scott Ananian wrote: >>> >>> On Feb 15, 2014 9:13 AM, "Brendan Eich" <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> > Aside: "ECMASpeak" is neither accurate (we don't work for Ecma, it's JS >>> > not ES :-P), nor euphonious. >>> >>> I'm learning all sorts of things! I guess there are two names here; what's >>> your preferred phrase for "the language used to write algorithms in the ES6 >>> spec" (JS6?), and, if it differs, "the language used by members of the TC39 >>> committee among themselves when describing language primitives in a very >>> precise way"? >> >> When I'm in a bad mood, I call it VisualCobol. It's painfully low-level and >> verbose, yet hard to verify. Let's hope that the JSCert work will help, and >> Allen has been common'ing subroutines. Whatever we call it, the spec >> language ain't great. > > But remember, prior to ES5, it was closer to Cobolish machine language. No > structured control, goto's targeting numeric step numbers, intermediate > results referenced by step number (sorta SSA with numeric ids), etc. > > There has never been a complete redo, just incremental improvements and > refactorings. But we've definitely advanced from the early 1950s to the late > 1970s.
Well, Algol-60 already was more structured a language than our spec-speak. Let alone how far the Algol-68 spec was ahead of us. :) /Andreas _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
