TC39 vs "the community"

[Domenic Denicola]

> Can you develop these particular accusations?
> Why would TC39 have priorities that don't align with the needs of developers? especially on modules which are clearly one of the most awaited feature as far as developers are concerned?

TC39 has a lot of constituents who use their experience with other languages to develop the shape of features, instead of building on community-developed solutions to the problems the community sees as worth solving. In modules this is particularly apparent. If you want a qualifier for "community," try "ES5-module using community."

I wouldn't call these accusations, and in general I don't appreciate the uncharitable (perhaps even accusatory) tone of your message. Experience from other languages is valuable in evolving a language---of course! It would be silly to think otherwise. And often these working modes are not in conflict at all, allowing us to solve problems the community has run into by drawing upon our experience with other languages. But there is, especially in this case, a real conflict between the guidance from other languages and the guidance from "the ES5-module using community's" experience.

> Whatever they end up looking and behaving, ES6 modules will happen with "the community" or without it.

They may "happen", in that engines may indeed implement the syntax once it settles, and browsers may indeed implement a loader once it's designed and specced. But whether they will be adopted by, say, Node.js (by supplying their own loader implementation), or the 80K packages on npm, or by the developers who are currently using AMD, or the developers who are currently just happy with <script> tags, is another question. Any claims otherwise are tendentious speculation, to borrow a phrase.