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ECMAScript 2016: New Version of JavaScript Language Released (softpedia.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Ecma International, the organization in charge of managing the ECMAScript standard, has published the most recent version of the JavaScript language. ECMAScript 2016 (ES7 or JavaScript 7th Edition in the old naming scheme) comes with very few new features. The most important is that JavaScript developers will finally get a "raise to the power" operator, which was mysteriously left out of the standard for 20 years. The operator is **...
It will also become much easier to search for data in a JavaScript array with Array.prototype.includes(), but support for async functions (initially announced for ES2016), has been deferred until next year's release. "From now on, expect smaller changelogs from the ECMAScript team," reports Softpedia, "since this was the plan set out last year. Fewer breaking changes means more time to migrate code, instead of having to rewrite entire applications, as developers did when the mammoth ES6 release came out last year."
It will also become much easier to search for data in a JavaScript array with Array.prototype.includes(), but support for async functions (initially announced for ES2016), has been deferred until next year's release. "From now on, expect smaller changelogs from the ECMAScript team," reports Softpedia, "since this was the plan set out last year. Fewer breaking changes means more time to migrate code, instead of having to rewrite entire applications, as developers did when the mammoth ES6 release came out last year."
lots of knowledgeable people hate or dislike javascript, and have done so from the start, and give excellent reasons for their hate and dislike.
but it has succeeded in spite of them and these reasons, and is more or less an indispensable part of modern on-line world currently.
why? what did these 'knowledgeable' people missed or still miss when evaluating it?
JavaScript is has been the language all browsers support, but why? Also why is it so bad? The answer to both questions is the same:
Because it was created in ten days. While Microsoft was scheduling meetings to discuss a proposal to plan a browser language, Brendan Eich created JavaScript (then called Mocha) and released it to the public. It was used because it was available, while other options were draft proposals, not yet approved for development, much less ready to use.
When you spend all of two days designing a language and seven days implementing it, you end up with a pretty crappy language.
The opposite end of the spectrum is Perl 6, which was designed from 2004 to roughly 2015. It's a rather nice language, for those who like Perl-like languages.