Brendan Eich

It's a tradeoff between compatibility with existing JS versus perf/capability enhancements. The ECMAScript committee goes back and forth on this topic. The biggest stride in that direction was strict mode, which is intended to catch most of the low hanging fruit. I know Brendan Eich has mentioned a number of things that could change to get the language faster. I don't, however, know if I read it all in one place or I'm combining nultiple one-off examples. I'm not confident enough in my memory to write out a probably incorrect list of things I remember. Here's a list of the various things I've read from Brendan in case you're interested in tracking it down: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57671 This is the LtU thread my previous comment referred to. It's a large (and fantastic!) thread, but I believe that comment and children are the most direct comments back and forth between Mike and Brendan. Andreas Gal is also on the thread and from Mozilla. http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/ Brendan's weekly JS podcast. They're relatively accessible and generally cover a lot of area. A good way to get in the language zeitgeist. http://brendaneich.com/ Brendan's blog, mostly focuses on ES Harmony stuff and Mozilla specific topics.

> I don't see the Self influence in JS. I think Eich's own words may be helpful here: https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/ Maybe it was accidental, but he refers to it as being Self-ish. And refers to it as "a quickie love-child of C and Self".

I found Brendan Eich's article: > Ok, back to JavaScript popularity. We know certain Ajax libraries are popular. Is JavaScript popular? It’s hard to say. Some Ajax developers profess (and demonstrate) love for it. Yet many curse it, including me. I still think of it as a quickie love-child of C and Self. Dr. Johnson‘s words come to mind: “the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

Eich didn't apologize. He expressed "sorrow at having caused pain" not remorse for what he did.[1] He wouldn't say he wouldn't do it again.[2] And he argued it wasn't discriminatory since then. I don't think it's even about visibility. People didn't want to have to choose between leaving Mozilla and following Eich. [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm-could-hur…

We are so far from cornering the market or even taking Chrome’s share that this seems like misdirection. Anyway, of course a monopoly or big enough company can go wrong, but Brave is built on ideas from https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ and if future Brave ever went bad, I’d join many others in taking it down. It helps greatly, beyond the properties discussed in that blog post, that we don’t track, silo, or process any user data in the clear. Privacy by default must use client processing more, along with advanced cryptography, to blind and weaken the natural path dependent advantages of servers.

I don't see any mentions of reproducible builds over there. If you're not familiar what reproducible builds are, I suggest you examine the following article: * https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ Mozilla, however, is different, in that all builds are posted to ftp.mozilla.org, in a versioned manner, and kept there for a while, which, at least in theory, makes it easier to verify or analyse the builds. What is the situation with Brave? Can I download a version released a few months ago? As it is, the browser is not only not really versioned (at least in the binary form), but there's not even a way to disable it from automatically updating itself. Self-modifying code, where the user has no control over the channel under which the modifications are pushed, is inherently insecure from the reproducibility's perspective.

"As I’ve often said, and as others at Netscape can confirm, I was recruited to Netscape with the promise of “doing Scheme” in the browser."[0] I guess what you're confusing is that he disclaims that it is inspired mostly on scheme: "I still think of it as a quickie love-child of C and Self."[0] [0]https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

Try reading this: https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/ "Why: asm.js is great, but once engines optimize for it, the parser becomes the hot spot — very hot on mobile devices. Transport compression is required and saves bandwidth, but decompression before parsing hurts."

The witch hunt against Brendan was just terrible. He made a minor donation years ago and it's something people blew out of proportion. Here was his statement about inclusiveness after his donation became an issue https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ To me it looks like he was committed to keeping Mozilla inclusive and would have been a great CEO.

Also reminds me of Tent [1]. Brendan Eich also mentioned something like this idea in the same post where he stepped down from being CEO of Mozilla [2]. It's good to see a lot of brains working on the concept because I think there's a huge amount of potential in putting data in the customer's warehouse. I think we can achieve a much greater level of composibility of consumer services when each doesn't have to worry about being its own data warehouse. [1] http://tent.io [2] https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/

Truth and Reconciliation was about truth, and not punishment. It did not demand that former supporters renounce their heresy or be punished, just that a historical accounting was made, the facts were laid down. Brendan Eich said the following in a blog post(https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/) after making a statement that he fully intended to continue the LGBT-inclusive policies at Mozilla: "I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain."

He's arguing for compartmentalisation[1]. This is how most religious people handle clashes between religious beliefs and the world: some topics are tagged for a religious worldview (whose defining feature is unassailable dogma), other topics aren't. In his case there's probably a jagged line that separates his professional duties to LGBT people in the tech community vs his political act against other LGBT people via Prop 8. People who are at the intersection (rarebit) threaten this world view, and the best he can do is handle them case by case[2] while trying very hard not to draw more general conclusions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(psychology) [2] https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/

the info in this piece about Mozilla following safari suit on third party cookies is out dated i think. https://brendaneich.com/2013/06/the-cookie-clearinghouse/

This is a great talk to watch about the development of JS. It's been a while since I watched it, but the point I was making, and the point I gleaned from this talk, is that new ideas need a test bed, and according to Eich Coffeescript is one of those places where new ideas are tested, and derived from. http://vimeo.com/27911873 http://brendaneich.com/2011/08/my-txjs-talk-twitter-remix/

This is a great 5-minute overview of the compiler, in broad strokes. If you're looking to work on a little to-JS language of your own, I hope it's helpful in getting started. The video isn't up online quite yet, but at JSConf earlier this month, Brendan Eich and I talked (http://brendaneich.com/2011/05/my-jsconf-us-presentation/) about encouraging this sort of language experimentation. There are lots of other examples available at http://altjs.org. Google's Traceur compiler, which implements their vision of the in-progress ES.next standard is a particularly good touchstone: http://code.google.com/p/traceur-compiler/wiki/LanguageFeatures

> Mr. Eich once gave $1K to a cause that was anti-gay. And $2.1K to a prop 8 supporter [0] > He backtracked and apologized but was cancelled anyways. This is lie and you are re-writing history. I can find no such statement from him. In fact all he said was he wanted to "express my sorrow at having caused pain" [1], the classic "I'm sorry your were offended by that" non-apology. He has never stated that his support of Prop 8 was wrong, he side-stepped the whole thing expecting us not to notice. > It will eventually come back to kill those that think you are not allowed to marry your mother, and probably, eventually, to those that think you are allowed to be religious What the... no seriously, what the heck? You can believe whatever you want to believe but you don't get to push your religious values onto others which is exactly what Prop 8 did. Please cut out the BS that this is somehow going to lead to outlawing religion. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/new-mozilla-ceo… [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

IMO, the trouble with COM and its imitators is that they're prone to gross over-use. The best example I know is Gecko, which over-used XPCOM and then had to go through what Mozilla folks called deCOMtamination. [1] I think IE might have over-used COM to some extent as well, but that's only speculation based on what I saw on the outside. (Disclosure: I work at Microsoft, but I joined well after IE became Edge, and I was never on that team.) Then Chrome landed like a piece of alien technology, and if we took a look inside, we found that it was one giant binary module (DLL, .framework, or executable, depending on the platform) that internally didn't use anything like COM, at all. It was also fairly well-known for its use of link-time optimization. I wonder how much these things contributed to Chrome's famous speed. Of course, Chrome was only able to pull this off because the team had great engineering discipline, and later, a great build system (first GYP, then GN). I remember when I built Chromium for the first time and was awed at how it was made up of hundreds of modules, but they were all built as static libraries and then linked together into one monster binary module at the end. These days, newer statically compiled languages like Go, Rust, and others are bringing large-scale static linking of arbitrary modules within reach for the rest of us. If I may stretch the IC metaphor, I'm guessing something similar happened with actual ICs; better EDA tools made it more…

> Google gets the best of both worlds here. As an open source project, Eddystone gets lots of hardware support from vendors, but if developers want to give users the best experience and have an easier time themselves, they have to submit to the walled garden. Eddystone doesn't need to be tied to Google though, and if developers want to use their own cloud solution or client API This is a killer. This isn't really open source at all [0]. Google controls the eco-system, and has most of the other vendors at its mercy (like how they flip search algorithms, give Google products a prominent listing in the search page, blacklist developers/websites etc). More than Search, its the mobile OS and API monopoly that Google is trying to build that's going to hurt even more. I work on AOSP, and I think it is ridiculous that Google owns so much of the eco-system [1] and continues to get praised for being "open" as well; very much like how this article seems to be praising them now. Besides, whatever happened to proposing to a central body and getting stuff standardized (I get that its political and slow, and no ones like slow)? Google works with W3C to get stuff in the HTTP standard [2], with ECMA too [3], but seems to have problem engaging standards body for other things where it has a near monopoly. Not long after Chrome has taken over a large market share, Google would start treating W3C the same, if it hasn't doing been that already [4]. [0]…

The Mozilla Foundation (and Corporation) are in a difficult position here, because they are being blamed for someone else doing something unethical, but it would also be unethical for them to do (or have done) anything differently in response to it. Brendan Eich's behaviour in 2008 in trying to take the choice away from couples to marry just because they happen not to be straight is a despicable step to interfere with the rights of others. His apology this month (https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/) didn't express regret for making the donation, only for "having caused pain"; nothing in the apology suggests that he has actually changed his views. It fits the classic pattern of an apology for how other people reacted to what he did, rather than for what he did. As abhorrent as I find his personal actions, it would not be appropriate for Mozilla to take political activities into account when making employment decisions, such as about promotions or dismissals. If employers could fire people for their political views or activities outside of work, it would be a net loss to our civil and human rights, even if in some cases such laws shield advocates for stripping away freedom and non-discriminatory treatment under the law. The Mozilla Foundation has acted entirely fairly and appropriately here, and it is not fair to blame Mozilla for the actions of Brendan Eich or for not discriminating against him on the basis of his political beliefs.

He opposed basic human rights. Does Mr. Eich still feel the same now as he did when he made that donation? I haven't done any research on this topic outside of the linked Ars article, but I find it interesting that Eich's own statement[1] about his donation completely avoids talking about his motivations for the donation. He even implied that he does not feel animosity towards gay people (although what he explicitly said was that the donation does not constitute evidence of animosity). So I'm left wondering as to what Mr. Eich actually feels on the topic. Yes, he donated money to a cause that opposed basic human rights, and that's undeniably an action worthy of condemnation. But in isolation, this 6-year-old action does not prove anything about his feelings on the matter today. What matters right now is how Mr. Eich will lead Mozilla going forward, not personal acts taken 6 years ago that were not on behalf of Mozilla. [1]: https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/

The entire premise of callbacks is that threads were a mistake because they broke sequential reasoning and control. JK, obviously callbacks became prominent as a result of folks looking for creative solutions to the C10K[0] problem, but threads have a long history of haters[1][2][3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C10k_problem [1] https://brendaneich.com/2007/02/threads-suck/ [2] https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/threads.pdf [3] https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-1.pdf

> And Javascript? My own choice. That choice absolutely makes sense, once you recall that Brendan Eich was initially hired to write a Scheme! Business and Netscape being what they are, it ended up with Javascript, but there are some lispy roots. See eg. https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

Two oversights in this article: - Failure to mention Netscape Enterprise Server (NodeJS is not responsible for expanding "the language's scope[…] far beyond the browser"—it was on the server from almost the very beginning; the author cites Brendan's 2011 blog post[1] which namechecks Rhino, but then leaves this out) - Failure to mention JS running on the James Webb Space Telescope (Brendan's post also namechecks Nombas, but doesn't go into much detail about it; Brent Noorda, who's also the son of former Novell CEO Ray Noorda, covered this in an update to the Nombas section of his site[2] in 2022) 1. <https://brendaneich.com/2011/06/> 2. <https://brent-noorda.com/nombas/us/index.htm>

It's fun to theorize about an alternate universe where JavaScript has a LISP-like syntax (Brendan Eich originally wanted "Scheme in the browser"[1], so this isn't so far-fetched!). Indeed, `interpret` sounds like a LISP macro that can "partially evaluate" code (so someone else, ie. the browser can continue to evaluate it). [1]: https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

> the closest thing [...] to currently popular languages like js awk is more than that: having introduced the "function" keyword, for e in a, semicolon-less syntax, stringly-typing, delete x[e], etc, etc, it's quite obviously the base for JavaScript, and Brendan Eich said as much [1]. [1]: https://brendaneich.com/2010/07/a-brief-history-of-javascript/

> He's not helming javascript in any way or form or even contributing to the standard to my knowledge. Brendan may not be helming JavaScript anymore. But he was very active during critical standardization period. For example: 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUtsgUrF-ec 2011: https://brendaneich.com/2011/08/my-txjs-talk-twitter-remix/ 2012: https://brendaneich.com/2012/10/harmony-of-dreams-come-true/ Also note that Asm.js (2013 precursor to WebAssembly) was developed during his term at Mozilla.

Brendan Eich doesn't say he was fired. https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/ Mozilla doesn't say he was fired. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/faq-on-ceo-resignation/

Off the top of my head Coffeescript introduced the function arrow syntax to JS, as well as class based inheritence. Also you don't need to take my word for it, Brendan Eich, the creator of JS himself has said that CoffeeScript had a significant impact on his thoughts about the future of JavaScript (https://brendaneich.com/2011/05/my-jsconf-us-presentation/).

I can't find your quoted text on that page, but here is the primary source: https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

Thanks, what I should have done was go find https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/