ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#1

Post by ejs » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 1:30 PM UTC

ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)
mail.mozilla.org

Re: ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#2

Post by mdasen » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 2:14 PM UTC

The title maybe should say ECMAScript 5 since I think a lot of us won't recognize ES5 as JavaScript.

Re: ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#3

Post by ejs » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 2:27 PM UTC

If you want to read the standard: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...

Re: ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#4

Post by cbetz » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 3:48 PM UTC

ejs wrote: post #3

If you want to read the standard: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...

Thank you for the link.

The introduction to the language (Part 4) is actually extremely succinct, to the extent that I now believe anyone who wants to write Javascript should read it.

Re: ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#5

Post by nmcfarl » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

ejs wrote: post #3

If you want to read the standard: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...

It took reading these summaries to get me in the mood for a big spec in the morning :)

ECMAScript 5 http://blogs.gnome.org/xan/2009/05/23/ecmascript-5/

ECMAScript 5 Objects and Properties http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-5-objects-and-properties/

Make sure to read the comments on ejohn's blog - they are quite useful.

Re: ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#6

Post by vicehead » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 6:07 PM UTC

I wonder what this means for Douglas Crockford's "Good parts" subset and JSLint?

Those were islands of sanity and beauty in the ocean of raw sewage aka the browser environment.

In any case, I don't see this as evolutionary nor revolutionary. The benefits are non-existent, the hassles too many to enumerate. This feels like something a jobless and clueless government would do.

Re: ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

#7

Post by gruseom » Sun, Dec 06, 2009, 7:25 PM UTC

How much of this stuff is coming from real-world need, and how much from ideas about how programming ought to be? I have a strong impression of the latter.

There is a revealing phrase in the blog post linked to elsewhere in this thread (http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-5-objects-and-properties/): "Property descriptors (and their associated methods) is probably the most important new feature of ECMAScript 5. It gives developers the ability to have fine-grained control of their objects, prevent undesired tinkering, and maintaining a unified web-compatible API." [italics added]

"Undesired tinkering" is the very essence of what made the web the web. These perennial efforts to add restrictions, control, lock-down, etc., seem to me rooted in a failure to understand this. Had these people been in control all along, there would never had been a web in the first place.

Every time I encounter this mentality, I refresh myself by re-reading Adam Bosworth's classic polemic in favor of the simple and sloppy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447086