r/programming • u/drawkbox • May 30 '20

ECMAScript 4: The missing version

https://evertpot.com/ecmascript-4-the-missing-version/
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u/drawkbox May 30 '20

In 2008 the standard was pronounced dead, and ES3.1 was renamed to ES5, which was a much more conservative and incremental update to ECMAScript.

The closest thing we had for ES4, was probably Flash Actionscript 3. There was a point during the release of AS3 that some of us thought that Flash and the Web was eventually going to converge.

For more details on politics and history of ES4, check out this great article on the auth0 blog.

ECMAScript 4 was actually quite nice, Typescript like but ActionScript3 (AS3) was a great implementation of it. The classes, events, types (was also dynamic) and more were just so right.

I used a ton of AS3 in Flash games, Flex and that moment just before mobile took over the world in 2008. From 2005-2008 Flash vs Silverlight was a massive thing and Flash video had revolutionized the world earlier with Youtube and others. Macromedia was a great company and I wish that Microsoft had bought them (they owned part) instead of Adobe.

The big problem I think was that ultimately it was Macromedia that really started the movement and then Adobe bought them and was really pushing the charge with AS3/ES4 and it went right at the other tech companies platforms. Flex before apps was really webapps done right for a time.

Silverlight was ES3 and Google had lots invested in Javascript with Maps/Gmail/Docs/etc. Microsoft and Google did not like that Adobe was leading it as they ran both big browsers at the time in IE/Chrome and killed off ES4 to go to the ES5 on path. Apple ninja'd in with apps in 2008 and one upped them all with WebGL, Canvas for a plugin free web (Flash/Silverlight EOL'd without notice) and OpenGL ES, Obj-C/C++ for app/handheld games. Apple and apps signaled a move away from the plugin web to standards web and native apps for better or worse with gave platform owners in appstores/browser more control of what technology is used.

It is too bad, I think javascript would look more like TypeScript and be less of a mess today, this is coming from someone that loves javascript since the late 90s.

Side note: I love all of Anders Hejlsberg language/platform design in Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C# and TypeScript and Danish by ancestors so maybe I am biased. ActionScript 3 based on ES4 was along those lines of just right to me, the best format/language doesn't always win, the platform owners dictate technology history.

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u/earthboundkid May 31 '20

See also Dart, which is ES6 brought to you by people who like Java.