Posted by em-bee 1 day ago
It is now becoming rare when I see any serious project that still uses JavaScript, everyone I know is using TypeScript and I don't recall any job posts not requiring TypeScript. What are the standards bodies doing? They are still implementing hacks upon JavaScript instead of seeing the writing on the wall.
Maintaining JS engines is difficult because of the old stuff that few developers actually use, it would make a lot more sense to start deprecating those features and adding the new ones developers actually want.
I started using alternatives to NodeJS because I don't feel like I should subject myself to a compilation step if I don't have to.
That said I also see the rationale for that. JS is already getting heavy and we should limit feature creep.
Also, "the proposed solution is not to backtrack on existing features" makes very little sense. If you're going to split something into core and "compiles down to core", then a LOT of features can be moved out of core because they're just (definitely worth keeping, but not necessary in core if that split were made) convenience APIs.
Incorrect: https://ecma-international.org/about-ecma/history/
No, it won't be faster, if you only optimize a lesser language. If you have higher level code running your optimizer can do more than if it only has a low level version.
No, it won't be more secure. Js0 might be more secure, but if we sites all run any of dozens of different tools those tools are going to be creating the vulnerabilities. It's shifting where security issues occur, and creating more of them.
I'm terrified this could happen. JS has gotten so much better over time. We are so close to being able to not need transpilers. This sounds like such an absurd cop out for browsers to say, meh, we just don't want to do the work to implement. Being so close & then saying, sorry, you must use big toolchains to develop for the web is a monstrously bad future.
I don't see how a browser running JS0 can be any less secure than a browser running JS