ECMAScript 4.0 Is Dead 168
TopSpin writes "Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript programming language, has announced that ECMA Technical Committee 39 has abandoned the proposed ECMAScript 4.0 language specification in favor of a more limited specification dubbed 'Harmony,' or ECMAScript 3.1. A split has existed among the members of this committee, including Adobe and Microsoft, regarding the future of what most of us know as JavaScript. Adobe had been promulgating their ActionScript 3 language as the next ECMAScript 4.0 proposal. As some point out, the split that has prevented this may be the result of Microsoft's interests. What does the future hold for Mozilla's Tamarin Project, based on Adobe's open source ActionScript virtual machine?"
Re:Establishing de facto (open source) standard ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Microsoft stuff in the summary is just trolling. Mozilla and Google are both on board with abandoning the current work called ES4.
Re:Can I just point out (Score:5, Interesting)
[Can I just point out] That Javascript as a development platform, as it seems to have become, is evil. It's just horrible from an efficiency, performance, security and architectural point of view. It seems to be the future.
You can point that out, but you'd be wrong. JavaScript hasn't recently "become" anything. The last major revision that all browsers supported was in November 2000.
It is a beautiful, expressive and quite powerful language that is just now starting to shine after years of being misunderstood by people like you.
Re:Establishing de facto (open source) standard ? (Score:5, Interesting)
My opinion: I need a modern virtual machine with capabilities comparable with Flash/Silverlight applets and level of integration comparable with javascript engines shipped with browsers. Compatible across browsers. Language independent (I would like to program this in Python) - maybe with some kind of intermediate representation (bytecode?). Capable to run bigger, non-trivial apps. Well designed. Open sourced and not patent encumbered.
Currently there is nothing satisfying my wishes. Pure javascript has somewhat limited capabilities (especially in multimedia area) and isn't fully compatible across browsers. Flash is proprietary and doesn't work well on some platforms and is just an applet (not well integrated with the browser itself). Silverlight is proprietary and does not work well outside windows. Java applets - along with their bad integration with browser itself and huge startup overhead - are IMO examples of bad design. Any ideas ?
Re:Establishing de facto (open source) standard ? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, no ideas, but ES4 was only going to give you about 1/10 of what you want anyway, so you don't lose all that much here.
Re:A real pity (Score:1, Interesting)
Barf. What we need is a trim lightweight browser scripting language. You want to write an desktop app, write a bleeding desktop app; don't bloat up javascript.
Re:Can I just point out (Score:5, Interesting)
OOP !== Class based OOP
JS isn't a class based OOP language, it's prototype based OOP language - the two are _very_ different. I can understand why it's a pain in the neck. It's also a pain in the neck to force a square peg into a round hole, but is the blame on the person who made the square peg or on the person whom thinks that the square peg should indeed be able to be put in the round hole?
Re:Why is JavaScript is so popular? Lamda Function (Score:3, Interesting)
JavaScript is popular only because it exists in almost every browser since a long time ago. This means that if you code something for a browser in JavaScript you know that it has a reasonable chance to work for the most commonly used browsers.
The use of JavaScript outside the environment of browsers is very limited, and exists only in specialized applications where it may be useful to have a script language. But then it competes with other script languages like TCL/Tk.
Re:Establishing de facto (open source) standard ? (Score:2, Interesting)
I haven't looked into SproutCore much, but isn't it just a framework built around JavaScript? If that's the case, how does that solve the multimedia part of the GP's request?
Re:it's the libraries and frameworks (Score:3, Interesting)
This environment could even be emulated in Silverlight, allowing things to run without any install on Windows.
Doesn't the CLR (as part of the .Net Framework) ship with Windows as of Vista?
Re:Establishing de facto (open source) standard ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have an idea. I'm working on it.
My initial idea I laid out here [screamingduck.com]
Since writing that I became aware of quite a few things also exploring this area. I'm currently putting together a proof-of-concept plugin using vx32 [wikipedia.org].
It should be possible to make something speedily executable on non-x86 with just a few restrictions and a bit of instruction-metadata.
Importantly. The spec is much simpler than any existing VM model so an open spec with multiple implementation methods should be quite feasible.
Re:Why is JavaScript is so popular? Lamda Function (Score:2, Interesting)
I think I get what you're saying but the difference between function having closures and functions being objects, but I just intended to point out that unlike JavaScript, Java, C, and C++ don't allow first class functions (which I refer to as lambda functions) though they do allow first class objects and function pointers though
First class functions and Lambda functions in Lamda calculus are the same thing. I also used the calculation of a derivative using a lambda function as an example which is something from mathematical calculus which may have added to the confusion.