Odd idea

[Mark S. Miller]

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Brendan Eich <brendan at mozilla.org> wrote:
> 1.0   1.1   1.2   1.3   1.4   ES3   1.5   1.6   1.7   1.8
>      ^                 ^
>      |                 |
>      basis for ES1     close to ES2



> Not sure if lack of replies means I was unclear, but the above number line
> should help highlight an awkward truth: ES3.1 is a step sideways (and in
> some ways backward) for "JS" as represented by Mozilla's implementations
> (Rhino is tracking SpiderMonkey).

Only "backward" if "more complex" is "forward" ;)

> That's ok, standardizing post-hoc can be
> good (making up new stuff for 3.1 is less clearly good in this light -- more
> work needed to uphold the ES3.1 < ES4 subset relation).

But ES4 is also sideways in this sense. There's a bunch of stuff in
Mozilla's JS1.8 that didn't make it into ES4. Also, there's a
tremendous amount of stuff in ES4 that was never in a JavaScript.


> Since JS has evolved ahead of the standard since 1999 (and did before then,
> resulting in ES1 and ES2), a "JS3.1" does not make sense. Any ES3.1 standard
> would be folded into JS2 or possibly JS1.9 (the numbers are decimals, so
> 1.10, 1.11, etc. are possible too, but unlikely in my opinion).

Glad to hear it's decimal. (Or at least binary floating point ;).) If
ES4 does become known as JS2, then, taking up the "doubling"
suggestion liorean mentioned, I suggest ES3.1 also be known as JS1.55.
Its successor could then be JS1.57, etc...


> Separately from "JS3.1", my belief is that jumping from JS2 to JS4 is not
> helpful to "half" the audience (not truly half; who knows? could be by far
> the majority, since "ECMAScript", .es suffix, etc. have not caught on) who
> think in terms of the JS1.x evolution, however much it might help those
> focused on the ES numbers.

Surely you don't mean to suggest that ES4 represents a small
evolutionary step beyond JS1.8? Wouldn't a larger increment be less
misleading?

-- 
    Cheers,
    --MarkM