__proto__ in Annex B (was: Re: Sep 27 meeting notes)

[Brendan Eich]

On Sep 29, 2011, at 6:54 PM, Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:

> On 28/09/11 00:06, Waldemar Horwat wrote:
>> Should we standardize __proto__ in Annex B?
>> MarkM + a few others:  Yes
>> Waldemar, Doug:  No
> 
> Unless we have a definite plan that no ES.Next impl will support __proto__, then by all means don't standardize it.

It is a standard (de-facto), we were just talking about making a non-mandatory normative spec for it. That does carry some weight but not much more than the de-facto standard, IMHO.


> However, seeming the conclusion before was that not all use-cases of __proto__ are handled currently, once they are addressed in ES.Next, there will still be some transitional phase. I'd rather specify it in ES.Next, even if we do then agree to drop it in ES.(Next+1).
> 
> That said about any transitional phase, if it turns out we can make it [[Writable: false]] in ES.Next, then all the better (thereby only providing a transitional phase for those who can already use Object.getPrototypeOf).

Making the spec break the existing use-cases won't make browsers break those case. We don't get free-lunch rewrites from busy/absent developers who used writable __proto__ some time in the past for content that is still in service. The spec can only do so much.

It would be better to remove __proto__ once the horses have found the new, healthy vegetables that replace it, and only then (based on surveys, web scans a la the sawzall study Hixie did [1], etc.).

/be

[1] http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/scripting.html