On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 8:34 PM, JD Isaacks <[email protected]> wrote: > I know ES2015 formally made the `__proto__` property a way to access/set an > object's internal `[[Prototype]]` property. > > Is there any reason why this wasn't spec'd as a well known symbol such as > `@@__proto__`. It just seems like it would line up well with other modifiers > like `@@iterator`, `@@species`, etc.
It was specified before symbols existed, and all implementations do it as a string property. If we were reinventing it today it would either be a symbol or something in the MOP, but are hands are tied by legacy. > Being that it was not formally spec'd it shouldn't have broke backwards > compatibility either. Backwards compat has nothing to do with specs, and everything to do with existing implementations. Multiple implementations agreed on __proto__, so our choice was either to leave it unstandardized or spec what the browsers did. ~TJ _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
