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I think the slow browser updates that existed prior to Chrome might have contributed to a lull in developing the language. Some of these features can't be fixed for old browsers with a polyfill, but now that updates are happening quicker and there's a lot of excitement around the language I hope we see more of these.

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I don't think there were ever any "slow updates" to Javascript, except maybe in the period of IE5/6 dominance to Firefox 1.0. In the Browser Wars, Microsoft and Netscape competed to add features as fast as possible. Firefox still has many additional features in its JS engine that aren't in ECMAScript (for each, coroutines).

I'm more concerned about adding features without fully considering the consequences. When you add a feature to Javascript, it's there forever. Rushed feature dumps are how we end up with things like the Web Audio API.

True, the early period had a furious pace of updates. I guess I was referring to the era of ES6, that lasted a long time. I think Microsoft at one point actually said that IE6 was the final browser and they wouldn't release a new version. IE6 was amazing when it first came out, but it became a blight in the end that hurt more than it helped.

That's why some features have been postponed from ES6 to ES7

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