The A-Z of Programming Languages jumps to Javascript

As part of Computerworld's series on "The A-Z of Programming Languages", Brendan Eich gave another interview on the state of Javascript and its history. It turned out to be one of the better ones.

Nothing new, except for the shifted timeline projection for ES3.1 and ES4, which Brendan now predicts to be Spring '09 for 3.1, with ES4 possibly being delayed until 2011. Since in the world of Javascript "implementation" comes before "standardization", this may not be as much of a change as it seems.

Anyway, if you haven't already, you may want to fly over it here .

Fresh Javascript IDE in Ganymede Eclipse release

I just tried the new Ganymede Eclipse release , which includes JSDT, the fresh JavaScript IDE as part of the new 3.0 version of the Web Tools Project. Previously, I have been using the JSEclipse plugin because it was much snappier than the Javascript support in the WTP. According to my first impression with Ganymede, Javascript editing seems snappier compare to previous WTP versions I've tried, but still slower then JSEclipse, so I'm not yet sure whether I will stick with the new JSDT or install the JSEclipse plugin again.

Unfortunately, the JSDT doesn't have E4X support yet, that would have been a big selling point for me. On the plus side, it offers some pretty nifty code validation capabilities, making sure that objects and properties are defined, and which works over multiple files, similar to IntelliJ. Bending the code validation and completion features to work right for Helma development would be no trivial task, I'm sure, which makes these cool features less attractive for server-side Javascript development.

Helma at the Linuxwochen in Linz

This weekend Anton Pirker will give a small introduction session to Helma at the Linuxwochen in Linz, Austria. The presentation will be tomorrow Saturday, June 28th at 12:00 at the Kunstuniversität Linz in Saal 1.

Brendan on the state of Javascript evolution

In this short interview , Brendan Eich repeats some of his comments regarding the positions of TC-39 TG1 members on ECMAScript 3.1 and ECMAScript 4, and the delivery of the latter in stealth mode to IE users via ScreamingMonkey and Adobe.

Is AppleScript done?

Daniel Jalkut sees the advent of SquirrelFish as an opportunity for Apple to dump AppleScript in favor of Javascript . The idea of using Javascript as a replacement for the AppleScript scripting language in OSX is nothing new. Late Night Software's Javascript OSA has offered that ability for many years already. Daniel's point is that Apple could do a better job at integrating Javascript with the Open Scripting Architecture.

I don't really see SquirrelFish as a factor in this, but certainly agree with the general sentiment. Yes, AppleScript may be more approachable for non-programmers, but Apple now has Automator for that purpose and fighting Javascript is a loosing battle anyway: Javascript will be the lingua franca for scripting purposes anywhere.

ES4 Draft 1 and ES3.1 Draft 1

In recent days, new partial drafts for the upcoming ECMAScript specs have become available. Parts of the ECMAScript 4 spec draft were previously spread all over the email archives. Nice to have them compiled in one place. The ECMAScript 3.1 spec draft wasn't available at all before, as far as I'm aware.

Want ES4 in Helma today?

Then take the just released Mascara Javascript 2 to Javascript 1 converter written in Python, run it using Jython on the Java Virtual Machine, and invoke it using Rhino inside of Helma, evaluating the results. Ok, now my head hurts.

>>> SquirrelFish!