JavaScript 1.7: Who ordered *that*?
Does anyone else get the strong feeling that the JavaScript language is being unnecessarily polluted with gratuitous features that web developers are not asking for?
It would be one thing if these changes were going thru a standards body, and there was some hope that most competing browser vendors would implement the changes. AFAICT tho, these changes are likely to be implemented by a single vendor (Mozilla) and no others… The risk of splintering the language into multiple incompatible versions looks very high from here.
I also think it would be better if Mozilla were advertising the changes as proprietary language extensions available in their products… but as it is, they seem to be publicly announcing new versions of the language. I suppose this is within their rights… but with a language like JavaScript which has a long history of incompatibilities… this just seems so unlikely to work out well in the end. Mass confusion among average web developers is absolutely guaranteed.
If Mozilla wants Python as a scripting language for their rendering engine so badly, why don’t the hurry up and implement support rather than engaging in this very dangerous game of tinkering with JavaScript, apparently without consensus?
None for me… I’m good, thanks.