ES3.1 Object static methods rationale document

[Igor Bukanov]

2008/7/18 Allen Wirfs-Brock <Allen.Wirfs-Brock at microsoft.com>:
> We ultimately concluded that the best way to think about what we are currently provide is that it is a set of primitive mechanisms that could be used to build higher level reflection facilities. If we had a strong use case we could reintroduce getOwnProperties as such a primitive, but so far it seem non-essential.  Incidentally, when we removed getOwnProperties we had to add getOwnPropertyName because otherwise you won't necessarily know what properties to ask for using getOwnProperty

If the goal is to define the minimal set of functions, then just
create, getPrototypeOf,  getOwnPropertyNames, getOwnPropertyDescriptor
and defineProperty is enough. One do not need to provide
getPropertyNames and getOwnPropertyDescriptor as the latter can be
trivially implemented using Own methods and getPrototypeOf.

But of cause then everybody would invent own clone, extend etc. So I
agree with Brendan that the familiar and widely used functions should
also be included to standardise their semantics.

Regards, Igor