4 ms·

My point isn't that you should apologize -- why should you? Any more than Sun should apologize for Java, or Microsoft for .NET Sometimes shit needs to get don

My point isn't that you should apologize -- why should you? Any more than Sun should apologize for Java, or Microsoft for .NET Sometimes shit needs to get done, and people need to make things happen. Google is trying to fix some problems; no big deal. You see "Tower of Babel", I see the free market offering alternatives. And don't be so quick to dismiss the likelihood of other browsers adopting Dart... If I'm not mistaken, IE supports Javascript, right? Let's argue languages based on technical merits, not how or by whom they were developed.

BrendanEich 15y ago
Your point was, and I quote: "Javascript itself was developed by a company (Netscape) in pretty much exactly the same way, for pretty much exactly the same reasons." That's wrong on at least two counts: 1. ["same way"] Netscape had a monopoly, it wasn't injecting JS into a situation where there was already a scripting language widely used on the web and implemented among multiple competing browsers. It was not fragmenting a multi-lateral browser market or web content language ecosystem. 2. ["same reasons"] The Dart reasons adduced in the leaked memo are nothing like our reasons at Netscape for doing JS. We (marca and I, mostly) wanted a language for non-Java programmers, non-programmers even, which could be written directly in HTML. A language designers, beginners, amateurs could learn by the yard. We did that without failing to upgrade a prior such language already widely supported. Dart, according to the leaked memo, aims to replace JS because JS can't be fixed. But who says JS can't be fixed? Why, the people making Dart, working at the dominant web company of the last decade! That's no "reason", it is a choice. "I see the free market offering alternatives." Uh huh. If Dart has native support only in Chrome, then it's not an alternative for people using other browsers. Then what? The "free market" is a bogus political phrase. I'm in favor of markets: real ones that self-regulate by preventing fraud (a central clearing/blinding counter-party, bid/offer/open-interest/size transparency) and abuse of power (market winners capture governments -- this has happened throughout history, it's a big problem right now, see the Global Financial Crisis). Talking about Google's anti-standards power games in the current multi-lateral browser market as if it's all "free market" goodness is b.s. "If I'm not mistaken, IE supports Javascript, right?" Think, floppybunny, think! IE supports JS because Netscape had a monopoly once it took over from Mosaic and grew the web via commercialization (SSL, another Netscape innovation). IE had no choice but to support "JScript", and indeed they were thus motivated to help standardize ES1. Standards, hmm. Google has no such monopoly. The likely outcome of putting a native Dart VM into Chrome and (again per the leaked memo) using Dart for web app development in Google is not to make other browsers roll over and embed the native Dart VM as well. Can you see Apple doing that? Microsoft? Mozilla would be expected to do it by all you bring-on-the-new-monopoly fanboys, but even if we did it wouldn't help. We're in a multi-browser market. Competitors try (some harder than others, pace Alex Russell's latest blog post) to work together in standards bodies. This does not necessarily mean everything takes too long (Dart didn't take a month or a year -- it has been going longer than that, in secret). Open standards development does not mean design-by-committee, either. Multi-browser collaboration among Apple, Mozilla, and Opera was what created HTML5. Dart goes the wrong way and is likely to bounce off other browsers. It is therefore anti-open-web in my book. "The end justifies the means" slaves will say "but but but it'll eventually force things to get better". Maybe it will, but at high cost. More likely, it won't, and we'll have two problems (Dart and JS). "Let's argue languages based on technical merits, not how or by whom they were developed." Now that's just low. You know damn well that Google has kept Dart a secret, so none of us can assess its technical merit (maybe you work for Google and can?). Sure, when Dart is released, let's argue in a new thread. This thread is about the fragmenting, essentially two-faced politics of the leaked JS strategy memo, and whether and why that's bad for the web. If you want a new monopoly to sweep the web clean, bully for you. No such monopoly exists now, so realists will still have to work in standards bodies. Is Google really working in standards bodies? As Maciej Stachowiak points out in this thread and over on reddit, more and more of their extensions in Chrome are not being standardized, and apparently won't be proposed "later".
- foofighter2 15y ago
  First of all, Javascript appeared in September 1995. A quick glance at the timeline of web browsers reveals that Netscape did NOT have a monopoly at that time. See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_... In theory, you could have gotten input from Microsoft, IBM, Mosaic, and so forth before ever releasing Javascript. Did you? No. Even assuming that those other companies had an insignificant share of the market, and could safely be ignored, you still could have asked for public commentary on your design, like you're asking Google to do now. Did you? No again. It's hypocritical to blast Google for doing the exact same things you did, for the exact same reasons. Secondly, every attempt to create a "programming language for non-programmers" has resulted in something horrible. According to wikipedia, "one of the design goals of COBOL was that non-programmers—managers, supervisors, and users—could read and understand the code. This is why COBOL has an English-like syntax and structural elements." When you are comparing your language design decisions to those made by COBOL, it is time to give up. Your own stated rationale for getting Javascript done in 10 days was to "prevent something worse" from happening. This is the exact same reason why Google is developing Dart. The only difference is that for them, "something worse" is Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, and Apple iPhone applications. Right now, if I want an application that "feels native," Javascript is a no-go, and I have to use one of these (closed, proprietary) technologies. Shouldn't we be saluting Google for trying to make the situation better, rather than blasting them for not asking their competitors for a mother-may-I? Dart is going to be an open platform that is well-supported by Chrome and Android. That alone should be enough to make it a viable choice. It's great that you created Javascript and that it became an open platform for everyone. Now someone is trying to build something even better. You should be helping them rather than raising objections which are illogical at best, and hypocritical at worst.
  - BrendanEich 15y ago
    "First of all, Javascript appeared in September 1995. A quick glance at the timeline of web browsers reveals that Netscape did NOT have a monopoly at that time. See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_.. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_.... First of all, you did not cite market share numbers to show lack of an effective monopoly. You cited a fun wall chart of all the various browsers, most with tiny and non-growing if not rapidly shrinking market share back in 1995. Come on! Edit: some stats from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#GVU_WWW_user_survey_.281994-01_to_1998-10.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#GVU_WWW_us... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#Dataquest_.281995_to_1997.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#Dataquest_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape-navigator-usage-data.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape-navigator-usage-d... Anyone around in the Netscape era knows that Netscape took over most of the market from Mosaic and smaller-share browsers, and evolved the web rapidly with proprietary (in the same sense I use against Google, however standardized later) extensions. This led to Bill Gates' famous memo about the Internet Tidal Wave, and his cancellation of Microsoft's 1994-era AOL-killer, Project Blackbird. Netscape dominated browser market share until IE came up to version 4, which was better on Windows than Netscape's old version 3 or very late version 4, and IE was bundled and locked-in hard to boot. "It's hypocritical to blast Google ...." Accusing me of hypocrisy shows ignorance of that word's definition in light of the history of my career. I'm not practicing one thing and preaching another. I worked on JS standardization less than a year after shipping it in Netscape 2 beta. After that I co-founded mozilla.org. I'm not currently doing A and preaching not-A, nor have I been doing "proprietary" work for a long time. I've paid my dues. Just FYI, like I owe you any explanations, Netscape did collaborate with Sun, gaining the "JavaScript" trademark license (a marketing scam, of course; I hated it). And I did collaborate with Bill Joy of Sun. But really, that's irrelevant. Netscape was a monopoly in effect (it's very rare for a real-world monopoly to have 100% of the market). We did not have ability or time to make open standards of all our work. We knew, because Netscape had rejected a low-ball acquisition offer from Microsoft in late 1994, that Microsoft was coming after us. And we knew they had the power to kill us. If we had not pushed hard to add programmability to the web (JS and Java in Netscape 2, plugins before in 1.1), then Microsoft would have been the reigning monopoly power, and would have abused that power (which did happen; it was prosecuted successfully). So, though it's no justification in general, Netscape -- including my JS work -- did forestall a likely Microsoft push of their tech -- including VB as the Web scripting language. Monopoly good-cop/bad-cop act, or just history now, neither all "good" nor all "bad". This is in contrast to today, where there is no browser monopoly and the top three have very close shares in many locales -- especially if you sort by model as well as make, and include WebKit variations on mobile, which is rising to eclipse desktop. "Dart is going to be an open platform that is well-supported by Chrome and Android." I think your sock-puppet is slipping. How do you know this? Do you work for Google? Nice HN history you have, btw (two comments, both on this thread today). Why not do as on Google+ and use your real name? I have.

BrendanEich 15y ago

Your point was, and I quote: "Javascript itself was developed by a company (Netscape) in pretty much exactly the same way, for pretty much exactly the same reasons." That's wrong on at least two counts: 1. ["same way"] Netscape had a monopoly, it wasn't injecting JS into a situation where there was already a scripting language widely used on the web and implemented among multiple competing browsers. It was not fragmenting a multi-lateral browser market or web content language ecosystem. 2. ["same reasons"] The Dart reasons adduced in the leaked memo are nothing like our reasons at Netscape for doing JS. We (marca and I, mostly) wanted a language for non-Java programmers, non-programmers even, which could be written directly in HTML. A language designers, beginners, amateurs could learn by the yard. We did that without failing to upgrade a prior such language already widely supported. Dart, according to the leaked memo, aims to replace JS because JS can't be fixed. But who says JS can't be fixed? Why, the people making Dart, working at the dominant web company of the last decade! That's no "reason", it is a choice. "I see the free market offering alternatives." Uh huh. If Dart has native support only in Chrome, then it's not an alternative for people using other browsers. Then what? The "free market" is a bogus political phrase. I'm in favor of markets: real ones that self-regulate by preventing fraud (a central clearing/blinding counter-party, bid/offer/open-interest/size transparency) and abuse of power (market winners capture governments -- this has happened throughout history, it's a big problem right now, see the Global Financial Crisis). Talking about Google's anti-standards power games in the current multi-lateral browser market as if it's all "free market" goodness is b.s. "If I'm not mistaken, IE supports Javascript, right?" Think, floppybunny, think! IE supports JS because Netscape had a monopoly once it took over from Mosaic and grew the web via commercialization (SSL, another Netscape innovation). IE had no choice but to support "JScript", and indeed they were thus motivated to help standardize ES1. Standards, hmm. Google has no such monopoly. The likely outcome of putting a native Dart VM into Chrome and (again per the leaked memo) using Dart for web app development in Google is not to make other browsers roll over and embed the native Dart VM as well. Can you see Apple doing that? Microsoft? Mozilla would be expected to do it by all you bring-on-the-new-monopoly fanboys, but even if we did it wouldn't help. We're in a multi-browser market. Competitors try (some harder than others, pace Alex Russell's latest blog post) to work together in standards bodies. This does not necessarily mean everything takes too long (Dart didn't take a month or a year -- it has been going longer than that, in secret). Open standards development does not mean design-by-committee, either. Multi-browser collaboration among Apple, Mozilla, and Opera was what created HTML5. Dart goes the wrong way and is likely to bounce off other browsers. It is therefore anti-open-web in my book. "The end justifies the means" slaves will say "but but but it'll eventually force things to get better". Maybe it will, but at high cost. More likely, it won't, and we'll have two problems (Dart and JS). "Let's argue languages based on technical merits, not how or by whom they were developed." Now that's just low. You know damn well that Google has kept Dart a secret, so none of us can assess its technical merit (maybe you work for Google and can?). Sure, when Dart is released, let's argue in a new thread. This thread is about the fragmenting, essentially two-faced politics of the leaked JS strategy memo, and whether and why that's bad for the web. If you want a new monopoly to sweep the web clean, bully for you. No such monopoly exists now, so realists will still have to work in standards bodies. Is Google really working in standards bodies? As Maciej Stachowiak points out in this thread and over on reddit, more and more of their extensions in Chrome are not being standardized, and apparently won't be proposed "later".

foofighter2 15y ago
First of all, Javascript appeared in September 1995. A quick glance at the timeline of web browsers reveals that Netscape did NOT have a monopoly at that time. See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_... In theory, you could have gotten input from Microsoft, IBM, Mosaic, and so forth before ever releasing Javascript. Did you? No. Even assuming that those other companies had an insignificant share of the market, and could safely be ignored, you still could have asked for public commentary on your design, like you're asking Google to do now. Did you? No again. It's hypocritical to blast Google for doing the exact same things you did, for the exact same reasons. Secondly, every attempt to create a "programming language for non-programmers" has resulted in something horrible. According to wikipedia, "one of the design goals of COBOL was that non-programmers—managers, supervisors, and users—could read and understand the code. This is why COBOL has an English-like syntax and structural elements." When you are comparing your language design decisions to those made by COBOL, it is time to give up. Your own stated rationale for getting Javascript done in 10 days was to "prevent something worse" from happening. This is the exact same reason why Google is developing Dart. The only difference is that for them, "something worse" is Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, and Apple iPhone applications. Right now, if I want an application that "feels native," Javascript is a no-go, and I have to use one of these (closed, proprietary) technologies. Shouldn't we be saluting Google for trying to make the situation better, rather than blasting them for not asking their competitors for a mother-may-I? Dart is going to be an open platform that is well-supported by Chrome and Android. That alone should be enough to make it a viable choice. It's great that you created Javascript and that it became an open platform for everyone. Now someone is trying to build something even better. You should be helping them rather than raising objections which are illogical at best, and hypocritical at worst.
- BrendanEich 15y ago
  "First of all, Javascript appeared in September 1995. A quick glance at the timeline of web browsers reveals that Netscape did NOT have a monopoly at that time. See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_.. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_.... First of all, you did not cite market share numbers to show lack of an effective monopoly. You cited a fun wall chart of all the various browsers, most with tiny and non-growing if not rapidly shrinking market share back in 1995. Come on! Edit: some stats from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#GVU_WWW_user_survey_.281994-01_to_1998-10.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#GVU_WWW_us... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#Dataquest_.281995_to_1997.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#Dataquest_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape-navigator-usage-data.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape-navigator-usage-d... Anyone around in the Netscape era knows that Netscape took over most of the market from Mosaic and smaller-share browsers, and evolved the web rapidly with proprietary (in the same sense I use against Google, however standardized later) extensions. This led to Bill Gates' famous memo about the Internet Tidal Wave, and his cancellation of Microsoft's 1994-era AOL-killer, Project Blackbird. Netscape dominated browser market share until IE came up to version 4, which was better on Windows than Netscape's old version 3 or very late version 4, and IE was bundled and locked-in hard to boot. "It's hypocritical to blast Google ...." Accusing me of hypocrisy shows ignorance of that word's definition in light of the history of my career. I'm not practicing one thing and preaching another. I worked on JS standardization less than a year after shipping it in Netscape 2 beta. After that I co-founded mozilla.org. I'm not currently doing A and preaching not-A, nor have I been doing "proprietary" work for a long time. I've paid my dues. Just FYI, like I owe you any explanations, Netscape did collaborate with Sun, gaining the "JavaScript" trademark license (a marketing scam, of course; I hated it). And I did collaborate with Bill Joy of Sun. But really, that's irrelevant. Netscape was a monopoly in effect (it's very rare for a real-world monopoly to have 100% of the market). We did not have ability or time to make open standards of all our work. We knew, because Netscape had rejected a low-ball acquisition offer from Microsoft in late 1994, that Microsoft was coming after us. And we knew they had the power to kill us. If we had not pushed hard to add programmability to the web (JS and Java in Netscape 2, plugins before in 1.1), then Microsoft would have been the reigning monopoly power, and would have abused that power (which did happen; it was prosecuted successfully). So, though it's no justification in general, Netscape -- including my JS work -- did forestall a likely Microsoft push of their tech -- including VB as the Web scripting language. Monopoly good-cop/bad-cop act, or just history now, neither all "good" nor all "bad". This is in contrast to today, where there is no browser monopoly and the top three have very close shares in many locales -- especially if you sort by model as well as make, and include WebKit variations on mobile, which is rising to eclipse desktop. "Dart is going to be an open platform that is well-supported by Chrome and Android." I think your sock-puppet is slipping. How do you know this? Do you work for Google? Nice HN history you have, btw (two comments, both on this thread today). Why not do as on Google+ and use your real name? I have.