A Homepage for the JavaScript Specification | Hacker News Reader

A Homepage for the JavaScript Specification

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95 pointsweinzierl39 comments

TC39 definitely needs a better, clearer website for people to browse then just using github repositories. So this is quite welcomed.

At the moment though there's nothing in it. No search capabilities or unique content and practically all links redirect to github. This isn't an MVP it's a prototype, with little value at the moment. Hopefully things will improve soon, but by shipping such a skinned down website they won't get the product launch effect again.

Product launch effect? They're a language standards committee, not a company. The entire online world already uses their product.

What search capabilities are you hoping for that are currently missing?

It's a product, and they've just launched it. The fact that they aren't a for-profit company is not really relevant.

Nobody uses the product right now, and by product I mean the TS39 website. And assuming that one of the purpose of the website is to be used they'll want the site to have traffic and traction or it's just a waste of effort.

Product launch can have a very big effect on future traffic - that means that many people are exposed to the site, and if it proves useful they might also start using it. As it stands no one is going to return to this site instead of going directly to the github account.

"What search capabilities are you hoping for that are currently missing? "

At the top of the hat, searching for specs in different stages? or by topic, or date. Without search the site can't be a location for discovery, and since it has no new content, it isn't a consumption website either. If you look at it, its basically a glorified landing page. Not something that is useful for the majority of its audience, I believe.

A websites doesn't have to be a product. It can just be... an informational website. Not everything that goes on the internet needs to be hyperoptimized.

There's a search [0] once you open a spec. Top left of the wiki page. And all links on a spec page appear to just be anchors to elsewhere on the page.

[0] https://tc39.github.io/ecma262/#menu-search-box

That's not part of the new website, it is part of each proposol repository (or the all spec) and existed for years as far as I can tell

> Ecma TC39, the JavaScript Standards Committee, is proud to announce that we have shipped a website [0] for following updates to the JavaScript specification.

Seems to be the new website from where I'm sitting. The spec is linked from the header. It might be an old instance, but it is clearly meant to be used as part of the new.

[0] https://tc39.github.io/

That's not how github pages work. https://tc39.github.io , which is the from the repository of the tc39 github main account is a new site.

https://tc39.github.io/ecma262 , which is the github pages for the ecma262 repository, has existed since September 2015 - https://web.archive.org/web/20150929233059/https://tc39.gith...

The new syntax for #private vars is truly terrible and the arguments for it are not compelling enough - some flavor of soft private would be OK. Please, if anyone from TC39 is reading, take the criticism seriously.

Wow. I had not seen that and I can't say that I'm a fan. I hope this doesn't end up in the language this way.

Plenty of people have brought up the "looks ugly/terrible/dumb" criticism and they seem to be sticking with the "total private encapsulation" proposal.

Personally I don't have a problem with it, since Typescript offers "soft" access modifiers that work fine for any use cases I can think of.

I am somewhat amused (and relieved) that the website for the JS spec does not itself require JS to read.

we have shipped a website

That is an unusual phrasing. Was it too simple to use "created"?

re: "shipped", there's quite a lot going on there! [0] I know I'd feel pretty shipped after that!

[0] https://github.com/tc39/tc39.github.io

Javascript is the first language which targets the DOM. Great first step ! The future of Javascript, i think, will target all platforms. Consider it as a meta language to compile to native platforms is one way for the adoption of JS itself.

Some platforms do support JavaScript, but it's hard to keep up with the EcmaScript standard if you are making your own engine.

>Consider it as a meta language to compile to native platforms is one way for the adoption of JS itself.

Compiling to javascript was never a good idea, it was only ever, at best, an adequate kludge for which no alternative existed. Now we have Webassembly, an actual bytecode which can run on native platforms and the web, and which doesn't carry the semantic issues that come with compiling one high level language to another poorly written, poorly designed, poorly typed one and pretending it's basically the same as machine code running on bare metal.

We can finally drive Javascript back to the web where it belongs and where it should remain quarantined.

"meta language" doesn't mean "compiling to javascript".

Almost all javascript usage is either running it directly or compiling to it from another language.

If you're talking about compiling from javascript to another language... that seems neither useful or desirable.

> that seems neither useful or desirable.

To you. JavaScript and TypeScript are the languages I am most productive in. There are use cases that I would benefit from being able to compile JavaScript to another language, or native code.

You are giving Javascript much less credit than it deserves. There is a reason it is used so much outside of webpages.

> There is a reason it is used so much outside of webpages.

How are you coming to that conclusion? The current Tiobe index still has Java, C and Python topping the popularity charts. [1] If you put any credence into whatever this W3Tech site is about, Javascript's popularity as a server-side language even seems to be overblown. [2]

[1] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ [2] https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_langua...

Are you seriously proposing c is the second most used language for web applications?

No, but not really following as to how you thought that I was?

Your comment is quite confusing. What is your argument? According to your references Javascript is the 7th or 8th most used programming language. That counts as ‘a lot’ to me.

You are arguing:

> There is a reason it is used so much outside of webpages.

I'm asking how you are coming to this conclusion. I personally do not see any evidence to support this and if you take any of these popularity/usage surveys into account, they do not support this either.

> 7th or 8th most used programming language. That counts as ‘a lot’ to me.

I mean, come on...that's not the same thing as "is used so much outside of webpages".

Yeah, it isn't really used much outside of webpages and web tech like Electron. The only applications where it has non-trivial usage are those that cater to webdevelopers.

I think that these surveys are really unreliable but even if a language is only used in 1% of all projects that is still a lot of projects. That’s why I think 7th or 8th is still a lot.

Here’s a Node package:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/left-pad

Node.js is for server side programming, not Javascript in the DOM. The package has almost 3 million downloads, weekly. To me, that is a lot.

Never seen that logo before. For some reason they set the numbers in Roboto but “TC” in something Avenir like. [EDIT: It’s probably Neutra Text, which the JS logo uses]

It looks bonkers, and not in a good way.

Please, can someone have the courage to fix the weird gimmicks of JS, even it means breaking backward compatibility?

Without the weird gimmicks, it's not Javascript. Many people have "fixed" Javascript in different ways, creating new languages in the process. One of these is even quite popular, aka Typescript.

Of course, just break backwards compatibility. I am sure that will have popular support from the community.

it's for the greater good

Having everyone's code break is not the greater good

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