On 15 February 2014 21:06, Allen Wirfs-Brock <allen at wirfs-brock.com> wrote:
> On Feb 15, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Brendan Eich wrote:
>> C. Scott Ananian wrote:
>>>
>>> On Feb 15, 2014 9:13 AM, "Brendan Eich" <brendan at mozilla.com <mailto:brendan at mozilla.com>> wrote:
>>> > Aside: "ECMASpeak" is neither accurate (we don't work for Ecma, it's JS not ES :-P), nor euphonious.
>>>
>>> I'm learning all sorts of things! I guess there are two names here; what's your preferred phrase for "the language used to write algorithms in the ES6 spec" (JS6?), and, if it differs, "the language used by members of the TC39 committee among themselves when describing language primitives in a very precise way"?
>>
>> When I'm in a bad mood, I call it VisualCobol. It's painfully low-level and verbose, yet hard to verify. Let's hope that the JSCert work will help, and Allen has been common'ing subroutines. Whatever we call it, the spec language ain't great.
>
> But remember, prior to ES5, it was closer to Cobolish machine language. No structured control, goto's targeting numeric step numbers, intermediate results referenced by step number (sorta SSA with numeric ids), etc.
>
> There has never been a complete redo, just incremental improvements and refactorings. But we've definitely advanced from the early 1950s to the late 1970s.
Well, Algol-60 already was more structured a language than our
spec-speak. Let alone how far the Algol-68 spec was ahead of us. :)
/Andreas
domenic at domenicdenicola.com (2014-02-20T22:04:51.132Z)
Well, Algol-60 already was more structured a language than our
spec-speak. Let alone how far the Algol-68 spec was ahead of us. :)
