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ECMAScript 4.0 Is Dead
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?"
The Microsoft stuff in the summary is just trolling. Mozilla and Google are both on board with abandoning the current work called ES4.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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 ?