Weiqi Gao's Observations - javascript tag

ECMAScript Harmony

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:34:39 GMT

Remember this from 281 days ago? It seems that the two sides have apparently patched up their differences and agreed on a future plan.

Brendan Eich: Executive Summary

The committee has resolved in favor of these tasks and conclusions:

Focus work on ES3.1 with full collaboration of all parties, and target two interoperable implementations by early next year.

Collaborate on the next step beyond ES3.1, which will include syntactic extensions but which will be more modest than ES4 in both semantic and syntactic innovation.

Some ES4 proposals have been deemed unsound for the Web, and are off the table for good: packages, namespaces and early binding. This conclusion is key to Harmony.

Other goals and ideas from ES4 are being rephrased to keep consensus in the committee; these include a notion of classes based on existing ES3 concepts combined with proposed ES3.1 extensions.

I don't know about you, but it sounds to me that ES3.1 (Microsoft & Yahoo!) has won, and ES4 (Adobe & Mozilla) is no more.

Maybe James Ward of Adobe played the "Flex 3, which uses ActionScript 4, which will be the next version of ECMAScript" hand once too many!

I don't know.

If JavaScript Were Such A Great Language ...

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:16:27 GMT

... why aren't its extra-web-browser versions being used widely.

Here's my observation: If people wanted to, they can use JavaScript for:

Windows shell scripting (JScript Windows scripting host)
General purpose Windows/.NET programming (JScript.NET)
General purpose dynamic language programming for the JVM (Rhino)
General purpose Unix shell scripting (xpcshell)
Scripting applications (for C++, Java, .NET applications through one of the above technologies)

All of the above technologies have existed for at least five years, some even ten. But if people are using JavaScript for non-web programmings, they are not talking about it.

Something to think about on a Monday morning.

JavaScript To Fragment, The End Of The Reign Of The Browsers

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:19:15 GMT

This doesn't sound good:

Brendan Eich: ... the proposed ECMAScript 4th edition (ES4) grammar is a bit more than twice as big as ES3's
... Pratap Lakshman (Microsoft): "We do not support or agree to the current ES4 proposal, either in whole or in part."
... The July 2006 meeting notes include a statement from Pratap that ES4 would be implemented in the next major IE release after IE7.
... Of course this all changed, starting early in 2007, officially only in March.
... But the cold hard fact, documented in that September face-to-face meeting note, is that the dissenting minority in TG1 rejects ES4 in whole and in part.
... Is it still possible for everyone to win? I have to say I'm not as positive as I used to be.

It appears that Microsoft and Yahoo! has thrown a roadblock onto the path of evolution of JavaScript.

Brandan is trying to keep a straight face and not to discuss the ulterior motives behind Microsoft's sudden change of hearts on the new JavaScript proposal. But as a commenter in the quoted blog entry points out, Microsoft is not interested in the enhancements offered in the new language proposal.

Yahoo!'s rejection is not as dark as Microsofts. Douglas Crockford, whom I assume is still with Yahoo!, made this comment:

Douglas Crockford: The name is exactly the point. A new language should have a new name. The deltas from ES3 to the proposed language are larger than ES3 itself. Claims of backward compatibility do not change the fact that there is more than enough new material in the proposal to make it a new language.

The lambda-geek in me is sympathetic to this position. After all, who wouldn't like the beauty of a clever little language off the beaten path and still useful in the real world.

However, as shown by GWT, JavaScript has become an assembler of the web. And it needs to grow up. Or it risk being overtaken by other languages.

My crystal ball is showing a fragmentation of the JavaScript language—ES4 in Mozilla and ES3.1 in IE8. And the cross-browser application development will happen in the intersection of the two, which is pretty much like the currently available JavaScript in Mozilla and IE7. The extra features simply won't be used.

Mean while, there's life outside the browser:

David Herron: ... Where I've gotten to is an idea that the Internet has been trapped in this prison-like shell we call a 'Web Browser'.
...I do see that the major Internet platform providers ... Mozilla, Microsoft, Adobe and Sun ... that we all seem to see this. That Rich Internet Applications do not need to be trapped within the web jail.
We are all working on application platforms which offer a way to build rich internet applications which run outside the web browser.

Folks, the browser platform is passé. The race for the next round of cross-platform (note: not cross-browser) internet applications (note: not web applications) has already started. And my prediction is that JavaFX Script will win.