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It obsoletes older browsers. For a while it used to be you could browse the web with almost anything, even a 10-year old Netscape. Now it's the norm that a 4 ye

It obsoletes older browsers. For a while it used to be you could browse the web with almost anything, even a 10-year old Netscape. Now it's the norm that a 4 year old browser isn't supported, because of new APIs and JS syntax.

Digit-Al 9y ago
If you haven't updated your browser for four years then you've got a hell of lot more to worry about than if javascript works correctly.
tcd 9y ago
Why do people like you feel that's acceptable? Software can work from anywhere between a few hours to a decade before an update is required, and it entirely depends on what you're doing. Websites evolve, and that's the choice of developers around the world. You have no right to complain if you don't keep your software up to date to a reasonable level. If you want to use 4 years old software, you MUST accept things are broken and that it's your fault. Try downloading Firefox 1-10 and see if they work today ;)
- akvadrako 9y ago
  I'm not necessarily against forcing upgrades because it comes with advantages, but I was explaining the tradeoff. It's one good thing about Apple and if say, domestic power outlets could change every few years, we could get higher voltages, DC, built in networking, more compact connectors, metering features, etc... But if everything operated like the web ecosystem, we might consume 100% of our time and money just on upgrades. And it pretty much guarantees there will only be a handful of vendors, because it's very expensive to stay current.
- wwweston 9y ago
  > Software can work from anywhere between a few hours to a decade before an update is required All other things being equal, a decade is preferable because time/attention is valuable. Frequent and in particularly non-careful updates can put individuals and in the grip of a form of the red queen problem rather than being able to spend time/attention on new levels of capability. I don't particularly mind some obsolescing of browsers where JS is concerned, and browsers in general have done a remarkable job of retaining backward compatibility. More problematic, though, is the attitude that's more or less every website should be a JS-powered (or, in the future, web-assembly) SPA without any kind of back-end fallback for user agents that don't support it, thus making JS capability the bar for any UA. That's short-sighted, doesn't consider user conditions outside of a narrow range of experience, doesn't consider that there might be user agents other than browsers as commonly understood. If that's all you have the resources to do and how you choose to spend them, that can still be reasonable engineering (though my experience is the benefits of figuring out how to make it work w/o JS first -- if it's possible -- often pays engineering dividends), but I think it's weird it's the default now. > Try downloading Firefox 1-10 and see if they work today ;) Firefox 1-10 would be broken because they're embedded in a set of assumptions about specific non-web platforms, not because many (if not most) websites couldn't reasonably support them as clients. I don't see any reason to import the shortcomings of non-web platforms into the web.
orf 9y ago
That 4 year old browser is full of security holes though. Why would anyone want to encourage that?
jsheard 9y ago
New syntax can obsolete older browsers, but it doesn't necessarily have to in the age of Babel and Typescript. Babel can already translate ES2018 async iterators and rest/spread into ES5 code that works pretty much everywhere.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  If you are using babel there is no need for the new browsers to support the new syntax at all.
  - always_good 9y ago
    Sure there are. For example, your bundle size shrinks when targeting newer browsers because more features exist, fewer need to be polyfilled.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      Then you must prepare two bundles, one for new browsers and one for old. I suppose that's possible, but doesn't seem worth it.
      - TomMarius 9y ago
        It is worth it most of the time.
      - styfle 9y ago
        You can use <script type=module> to target newer browsers. It’s definitely worth having two bundles because the ES6 and newer is much smaller. And one day, you stop shipping the old ES5 bundle.
irrational 9y ago
My view is, if everyone was on an evergreen browser (and didn't do something like turn off the auto updates) then there would be no such thing as a 4-year old (or even 1-year old browser). If I could wave a magic wand I'd have 100% of websites all using cutting edge HTML, CSS, JS features tomorrow so the WWW absolutely breaks for anyone not using an up to date evergreen browser (the lone exceptions being the download pages for Firefox, Chrome, etc.). The sooner businesses, Luddites and grandpas upgrade the better. But that's just my view as a developer who is so sick and tired of supporting browsers that have been out of support for years.
- Yetanfou 9y ago
  Your view excludes all platforms made before "evergreen browsers" became a thing and will exclude all platforms which the makers of "evergreen browsers" deem too small or unprofitable to support. So thanks, but no thanks. There is enough of planned obsolescence already, no need to add another weapon to the arsenal.

Digit-Al 9y ago

If you haven't updated your browser for four years then you've got a hell of lot more to worry about than if javascript works correctly.

tcd 9y ago

Why do people like you feel that's acceptable? Software can work from anywhere between a few hours to a decade before an update is required, and it entirely depends on what you're doing. Websites evolve, and that's the choice of developers around the world. You have no right to complain if you don't keep your software up to date to a reasonable level. If you want to use 4 years old software, you MUST accept things are broken and that it's your fault. Try downloading Firefox 1-10 and see if they work today ;)

akvadrako 9y ago
I'm not necessarily against forcing upgrades because it comes with advantages, but I was explaining the tradeoff. It's one good thing about Apple and if say, domestic power outlets could change every few years, we could get higher voltages, DC, built in networking, more compact connectors, metering features, etc... But if everything operated like the web ecosystem, we might consume 100% of our time and money just on upgrades. And it pretty much guarantees there will only be a handful of vendors, because it's very expensive to stay current.
wwweston 9y ago
> Software can work from anywhere between a few hours to a decade before an update is required All other things being equal, a decade is preferable because time/attention is valuable. Frequent and in particularly non-careful updates can put individuals and in the grip of a form of the red queen problem rather than being able to spend time/attention on new levels of capability. I don't particularly mind some obsolescing of browsers where JS is concerned, and browsers in general have done a remarkable job of retaining backward compatibility. More problematic, though, is the attitude that's more or less every website should be a JS-powered (or, in the future, web-assembly) SPA without any kind of back-end fallback for user agents that don't support it, thus making JS capability the bar for any UA. That's short-sighted, doesn't consider user conditions outside of a narrow range of experience, doesn't consider that there might be user agents other than browsers as commonly understood. If that's all you have the resources to do and how you choose to spend them, that can still be reasonable engineering (though my experience is the benefits of figuring out how to make it work w/o JS first -- if it's possible -- often pays engineering dividends), but I think it's weird it's the default now. > Try downloading Firefox 1-10 and see if they work today ;) Firefox 1-10 would be broken because they're embedded in a set of assumptions about specific non-web platforms, not because many (if not most) websites couldn't reasonably support them as clients. I don't see any reason to import the shortcomings of non-web platforms into the web.

orf 9y ago

That 4 year old browser is full of security holes though. Why would anyone want to encourage that?

jsheard 9y ago

New syntax can obsolete older browsers, but it doesn't necessarily have to in the age of Babel and Typescript. Babel can already translate ES2018 async iterators and rest/spread into ES5 code that works pretty much everywhere.

akvadrako 9y ago
If you are using babel there is no need for the new browsers to support the new syntax at all.
- always_good 9y ago
  Sure there are. For example, your bundle size shrinks when targeting newer browsers because more features exist, fewer need to be polyfilled.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    Then you must prepare two bundles, one for new browsers and one for old. I suppose that's possible, but doesn't seem worth it.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      It is worth it most of the time.
    - styfle 9y ago
      You can use <script type=module> to target newer browsers. It’s definitely worth having two bundles because the ES6 and newer is much smaller. And one day, you stop shipping the old ES5 bundle.

irrational 9y ago

My view is, if everyone was on an evergreen browser (and didn't do something like turn off the auto updates) then there would be no such thing as a 4-year old (or even 1-year old browser). If I could wave a magic wand I'd have 100% of websites all using cutting edge HTML, CSS, JS features tomorrow so the WWW absolutely breaks for anyone not using an up to date evergreen browser (the lone exceptions being the download pages for Firefox, Chrome, etc.). The sooner businesses, Luddites and grandpas upgrade the better. But that's just my view as a developer who is so sick and tired of supporting browsers that have been out of support for years.

Yetanfou 9y ago
Your view excludes all platforms made before "evergreen browsers" became a thing and will exclude all platforms which the makers of "evergreen browsers" deem too small or unprofitable to support. So thanks, but no thanks. There is enough of planned obsolescence already, no need to add another weapon to the arsenal.