4 ms·

> Originally (pre-ECMA days).. JS appeared in Dec 95 and the first ECMA spec came in June 97, so that's a pretty narrow window. But it's certainly true that AS

> Originally (pre-ECMA days).. JS appeared in Dec 95 and the first ECMA spec came in June 97, so that's a pretty narrow window. But it's certainly true that ASI style (omitting semicolons) was relatively rare before, say, 2010-2014 or so. Its subsequent rise in popularity is probably thanks to Node (which uses ASI style), and a small group of ASI developers whose code suddenly got more visible once npm came along. But as a practical matter, the rules on ASI have been the same since forever, and the rules are that they're nearly always optional. The only realistic case where omitting them causes issues is when you start a line of code with a parenthesis or a square bracket. Back when ASI first got popular that was the one big gotcha, but nowadays thanks to linters even that's not an issue. What you may be remembering is, some years back there were some cases where certain JS tools didn't support ASI. Famously, there was a thing where a popular minimizer (JSMin) broke ASI code and Crockford didn't want to fix it because he didn't like ASI style (he later relented). But I've never heard of an actual JS engine not supporting ASI correctly.

hnlmorg 4y ago
> JS appeared in Dec 95 and the first ECMA spec came in June 97, so that's a pretty narrow window. In theory yes, in practice not really. IE4 was the first version of JScript to be based on ECMA and that was released at the end of 1997. But in that era people didn't update regularly. Sure some folk (myself included) installed IE4 on top of Windows 95 SE[1]. But a lot of people wouldn't have had access to IE4 until they bought a new PC with Windows 98 pre-installed. So there was a good few years in practice. Also worth noting that the web changed so much between 95 and 98. It might have only been three years in real terms but it felt like a lifetime in terms of technical revolutions. [1] If I recall correctly, I had IE4 because it came on a .Net Magazine cover CD (not to be confused with Microsoft .NET: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_(magazine) )

hnlmorg 4y ago

> JS appeared in Dec 95 and the first ECMA spec came in June 97, so that's a pretty narrow window. In theory yes, in practice not really. IE4 was the first version of JScript to be based on ECMA and that was released at the end of 1997. But in that era people didn't update regularly. Sure some folk (myself included) installed IE4 on top of Windows 95 SE[1]. But a lot of people wouldn't have had access to IE4 until they bought a new PC with Windows 98 pre-installed. So there was a good few years in practice. Also worth noting that the web changed so much between 95 and 98. It might have only been three years in real terms but it felt like a lifetime in terms of technical revolutions. [1] If I recall correctly, I had IE4 because it came on a .Net Magazine cover CD (not to be confused with Microsoft .NET: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_(magazine) )