On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Brian Terlson
<Brian.Terlson at microsoft.com>wrote:

> Brendan Eich wrote:
> > Brian Terlson wrote:
> > > I haven't collected much data on this so I'm not sure what the
> > > prevalence is,
> >
> > Can you try to find some sightings in the wild?
>
> I have searched my Alexa Top 10k dataset and didn't find any occurrences.
> The dataset has the same limitations as before - only front page load, no
> dynamic scripts - with the added problem of now being ~1.5yrs old. I'm not
> sure how much the absence of this pattern tells us.
>

The biggest problem with this test is that the Alexa set selects for sites
with experienced developers writing for production sites. The pattern you
are trying to detect is not used in these circumstances.

>
> My thinking is that instrumenting some runtime and browsing/crawling the
> web would give us the data to feel confident about dropping this "feature".
> Unfortunately that isn't an option available to me to try at the moment...
> Open to other suggestions, though!
>

As you say "all browsers seem to allow it". Browsers made the mistake and
we should not go back now and blame developers on smaller sites because
they use this kind of code. Make it a syntax error in modules and save
yourself a lot of headaches.

jjb
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On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Brian Terlson <Brian.Terlson at microsoft.com>wrote:

> I have searched my Alexa Top 10k dataset and didn't find any occurrences.
> The dataset has the same limitations as before - only front page load, no
> dynamic scripts - with the added problem of now being ~1.5yrs old. I'm not
> sure how much the absence of this pattern tells us.

The biggest problem with this test is that the Alexa set selects for sites
with experienced developers writing for production sites. The pattern you
are trying to detect is not used in these circumstances.

> My thinking is that instrumenting some runtime and browsing/crawling the
> web would give us the data to feel confident about dropping this "feature".
> Unfortunately that isn't an option available to me to try at the moment...
> Open to other suggestions, though!

As you say "all browsers seem to allow it". Browsers made the mistake and
we should not go back now and blame developers on smaller sites because
they use this kind of code. Make it a syntax error in modules and save
yourself a lot of headaches.