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Can we start calling JavaScript EcmaScript?
- suff 8y agoNo. C# and many others are ECMA languages too.
- pdmccormick 8y agoThey are ECMA languages, but would any of them be known as EcmaScript?
- erik_seaberg 8y agoThis is a lost cause, like "hacker" and "MiB" and "literally".
- shmerl 8y agoWhat's wrong with "literally"?
- konradb 8y agoIt is now often used to mean 'figuratively' or merely for emphasis.
- shmerl 8y agoI've never encountered such usage (as figuratively). For emphasis yes, that's not uncommon. But why is the later wrong?
- konradb 8y agoIf I understand your question you asking why it is wrong to use literally for emphasis? I guess that depends on whether you are a linguistic prescriptivist or not (I probably err towards that side, alas, a recipe for unhappiness!). A linguistic prescriptivist might say it was wrong because people might say something they want to emphasise like 'my phone is literally blowing up' - but according to the traditional meaning of the word literally, that means it would be literally blowing up, like an actual explosion. Once 'literally' just means 'emphasise this' then you have to go into further contortions if you actually want to express something that means something that is exactly as described, not figuratively.
- apendleton 8y agoInterestingly, "literally" itself was likely exactly such a contortion to deal with the fact that "really" became an intensifier when before it meant that the manner of something was, you know, real.
- konradb 8y agoLike a linguistic journey through the years to find and describe truth, always being evaded!
- shmerl 8y ago> my phone is literally blowing up I suppose emphasis can turn into exaggeration, then literally is indeed a bad fit. But it can be emphasizing something without exaggeration too. I.e. "literally days ago". Which indeed can mean a few days ago, but it's emphasizing it. I don't think it's a wrong usage.
- dbatten 8y agoCan you show me an example? Most of the examples I've seen are cases where people are using the word "literally" in a hyperbolic sense, which I would argue is perfectly legitimate. For example, suppose somebody says "I'm so hungry, I could literally eat an elephant." It's obvious that they're being hyperbolic because of course nobody eats elephants. Adding literally just adds to the hyperbole because it makes the sentence that much more ridiculous. It's a figure of speech and perfectly legitimate, IMHO.
- thomk 8y agoAnd what is wrong with Men in Black? I love that movie.
- _nalply 8y agoIt's about mebibyte (2^20 bytes, unit symbol MiB), compared to megabyte (10^6 bytes). For example a harddisk with a terabyte capacity does not have space for 2^30=1,099,511,627,776 bytes but about 10% less. Some disk management tools however were based on base 2 measurements, and the customer might cry foul because the tool reported only about 930 gigabytes, err gibibytes.
- mchahn 8y agoI prefer MB and Mb.
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoand crypto
- Someone1234 8y agoAnother one, the word "free." Much like literally it has lost its original meaning and now means "included." For example, "Get a free widget with this 12 month magazine subscription ($12.99/month)!" And then people will genuinely argue that the widget is "free" in spite of it being tied to $150+ in mandatory expenditure. The word people are looking for is included, the widget is INCLUDED with a 12 month/$12.99/month subscription, there's nothing "free" about it. Nothing about the above is contrived either, these "free" ads and claims are all around us.
- reblws 8y agoYes
- Someone1234 8y agoOnce we come up with a better name than "EcmaScript." I can neither say that nor remember it, and while JavaScript is owned by Oracle, at least it is memorable (And everyone will know what you're talking about when you say it out loud). Just put native TypeScript support in the browsers, and let's just use the term TypeScript and also have a language with actual types in it(!).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kizer 8y agoI support this. Just integrate typescript into the Ecma standard, add browser support, and create a true improvement to JS.
- stocktech 8y agoMaybe I'm out of the loop, but why?
- foxyv 8y agoJavaScript is trademarked by Oracle who has been litigating aggressively to take advantage of their intellectual property. A lot of companies cannot call their versions of ECMA compliant interpreters by the name JavaScript which confuses people.
- shmerl 8y agoIt was supposed to be called LiveScript if I remember correctly. A lot better than other options. A pity the name was messed up.
- Mononokay 8y agoIt was originally called Mocha, actually! The history of its names is really interesting.
- Mononokay 8y agoIt didn't start as EMCAscript. It started as Mocha. Javascript is the most famous implementation of it, but there's also ActionScript, JScript, and countless others.
- cvaidya1986 8y agoPeople will still call it JavaScript
- anauleau 8y agoPerhaps if we change the extension to .es
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vemv 8y agoI've been calling it ES6 for a while. It reflects the variety of js that generally matters now. Also concise, and reasonably pronounceable (I'd rather say aloud "ee-es-six" than "ecmascript" which seems to me an awkward aglomeration of phonemes)
- orand 8y agoDid you know they're trying to get you to stop that and call it ES2015? No joke. Only standards bodies think it's a good idea to come up with a new version of the word "version" for each major new version.
- orand 8y agoThe best example of this I know is the HL7 FHIR standard. v1 = DSTU1, v2 = DSTU2, v3 = STU3, v4 = R4 I'm hoping that they call the next one "V5", just for fun.
- magissima 8y agoEcmaScript is a pretty bad name imo. "Ecma" sounds like it's halfway between eczema and acne and doesn't have any readily apparent meaning and "Script" is a totally meaningless suffix at this point.
- kizer 8y agoAlso, similar to enema... Poor ECMA having an unfortunate starting acronym.
- monochromatic 8y agoEcmascript is an awful name. It should rebrand as NBL.
- jvandyke 8y agoCall it what you like. It doesn't matter so long as whoever you're talking to understands what you mean. Don't we have enough change and confusion in the *Script world without also trying to change the name? I just don't understand what the value would be.
- VikingCoder 8y agoReminds me very much of RMS insisting we call it "GNU / Linux."
- 0x7f800000 8y agoWhat? Oracle threatens to sue people who use the word "Java" without paying them. GNU would very much like you to use "GNU" to recognize the contributions of GNU software in providing a usable operating system around the Linux kernel. How exactly does one remind you of the other?
- VikingCoder 8y agoNeither is going to happen. I'm not going to call it EcmaScript. I'm not going to call it GNU / Linux.
- orand 8y agoLet's rename JavaScript to JNOScript, as in "JNO's Not Oracle". Pronounced "JunoScript".
- bebe3000 8y agoI GNU what you did there.
- kirillseva 8y agoGreat! Have some WINE.
- alephnan 8y agoAs long as recruiters recognize it.
- fortyseven 8y agoWhy not just "JS"? It no longer stands for anything. It's just two letters.
- baron816 8y agoHow about EichScript?
- acheron 8y agoIn an ideal world, we wouldn't call it anything.
- pentae 8y agoI would still prefer we called it FuckOracleScript, or FoScript, for short.
- justboxing 8y agoNo you can't. Originally it was called Mocha and went through a series of name changes and branding before Netscape acquired a trademark license from Sun Microsystem and settled on Javascript. > JavaScript was created in May 1995 by Brendan Eich while at Netscape, reportedly in only 10 days. It was originally named Mocha, a name chosen by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, but was renamed four months later to LiveScript. At that time, Sun Microsystems owned the trademark for JavaScript. Netscape acquired a trademark license and renamed LiveScript to JavaScript in December 1995. It was somewhat of a marketing maneuver since Java was really popular at the time. The languages are not related at all. Source: http://www.benmvp.com/learning-es6-history-of-ecmascript/ http://www.benmvp.com/learning-es6-history-of-ecmascript/
- O1111OOO 8y ago> Originally it was called Mocha That's interesting... did not know. When I saw the title, I thought Ecma could use a coffee play on words[0]. Seeing Mocha, later renamed to Java, seems to partially confirm that there's a coffee backstory somewhere. [0] https://www.powerthesaurus.org/coffee https://www.powerthesaurus.org/coffee
- bebe3000 8y agoIdeas: NotJavaScript JS JScript ESX undefined
- cema 8y agoI have a feeling it is gradually more and more known as Node.js, so maybe the name will propagate back to the web community. EcmaScript has never caught on, for a number of reasons, some mentioned in earlier comments.
- 0x7f800000 8y agoI think we should rename it to anything else which starts with the letter 'J' and ends with 'Script', or can be initialised as 'JS'. Anything else is a non-starter, because we're not going to rename countless millions of .js files.
- valbaca 8y agoHow about just "JS"? Can be "pronounced" as "jah-vah-skript`" or "jay-es".
- iliaznk 8y agoMeh... Why not just `The Script`?
- kizer 8y agoMy suggestion is actually ES6. It clarifies that you're referring to "modern" JS. Also, it will change with every year. Most people are using ES6 as the name anyways - you don't hear "ES6 JavaScript" but only "ES6".
- kizer 8y agoMaybe they could change "Ecmascript" to "ES" (forgetting that it stood for Ecmascript). Like how SciFi --> SyFy, I guess.