Off The Main Thread Podcast

TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part II: JS0 and JSSugar

In this episode, Surma talks about a presenation-maybe-soon-to-be-a-proposal "JS0", which explores the idea of splitting JavaScript into two specifications: JS0, focusing on security, performance and capabilties, implemented by engines; and JSSugar, focussing on developer productivity and syntactic sugar features implemented by build tools.

Notes & Corrections:

  • Yes, I know, people still do have to step through assembler. But I stand behind the essence of my point: The debug symbols for compiled languages feel very reliable. We should be able to at least match that reliability in JavaScript.
  • Guy Bedford currently works at Fastly.

Resources:

Transcript
  1. Surma:Welcome back! Welcome back? No, this time it's actually a welcome back to a brand new episode of OTMT. I am Surma.
  2. Jake:I love the way you started. Too high there, realised you couldn't sustain it, and just
  3. Jake:came down an octave for the rest. I'm Jake, by the way. Hello.
  4. Surma:And this is our podcast. And thanks to Shopify for letting us do this and giving us some money.
  5. Jake:I mean, they don't give us money to do this. Well, they pay for the hosting, but, yeah.
  6. Surma:They do, yeah. Yeah, it's how society works.
  7. Jake:They pay us to do other things. Which I think is fair enough. That seems fair, doesn't it?
  8. Jake:Right, so are you going to apologise to the listeners for what you did?
  9. Surma:Yes, it was genuinely not planned to make this a two-part. I'm basically pulling a wicket.
  10. Jake:What's that? No?
  11. Surma:Like, didn't you hear the whole drama that wicked the movie where they turned the musical into a movie? A two-hour-thirty-movie?
  12. Surma:And it turns out it's a two-parter, so it's gonna be another two-hour-and-thirty-movie coming out, even though the musical itself is two hours long with intermission.
  13. Surma:What? I am shocked. Shocked, I say!
  14. Jake:I didn't know that. OK, yes, OK, that's outside of my sphere of knowledge. Hey, look, musicals
  15. Jake:are not my thing, I have to say. Yeah. Ah, oh, there you go. I mean, I've seen musicals.
  16. Surma:Well, that's what happens when you live with a musicologist.
  17. Jake:I've seen enough to know. I was once musical curious, but I gave it a try and I just decided
  18. Jake:I just didn't like it. So I'm not against people who like musicals. I think it's fine.
  19. Surma:As long as they do it in their own home.
  20. Jake:Yeah, as long as they don't rub it in my face, I'm fine with it. And I'd say, you know, they're
  21. Jake:fine people, it's just not for me.
  22. Surma:Yes, so my sincerest apologies to our listeners. I started the last episode saying,
  23. Surma:we're gonna talk about two proposals, and then we jabbered on about the first one for so long that the second episode felt like abuse.
  24. Surma:So, that means we now have an entire episode where we talk about the juicy, the dramaful, the beautiful JS Zero proposal.
  25. Jake:Oh, here we go. Yes, yes, finally. Right. This is what I want.
  26. Surma:Shall we just jump straight in?
  27. Jake:Just give me all the drama. Come on. Been waiting weeks for this.
  28. Surma:So, I guess, first asterisk. Is it a proposal? I'm actually not sure.
  29. Surma:So, it was talked about in the last face-to-face meeting of TC39 in October,
  30. Surma:and it was just a slight deck scheduled in the open-ended discussion category.
  31. Surma:Well, that's the thing, right? So, this slight deck that was presented was linked to in the agenda,
  32. Jake:And it kicked up a big ol' stink, if social media is to be believed.
  33. Surma:which is public, as it should be for a standards body, so I'm applauding them.
  34. Surma:And the slight deck was, you know, in the open-ended discussion category.
  35. Jake:Mmm.
  36. Surma:was linked to in the agenda, which is public, as it should be for a standards body, so I'm applauding them.
  37. Surma:And the slight deck was, you know, made and presented by Shu, our former colleague at the Googles.
  38. Surma:But the slight deck also lists other people, one person from Google, that being Shu,
  39. Surma:two people from Mozilla, two people from Apple, one person from Modable, and one person from Sony.
  40. Surma:So, this is not just a proposal, or this is not a slight deck, I should say, where they go like,
  41. Jake:Oh, interesting, because, I mean, with the drama that I saw, and like I say, I've, well,
  42. Surma:LOL, Google doing shit, but this was actually, you know, run by other people and other browser people.
  43. Surma:LOL, Google doing shit, but this was actually, you know, run by other people and other browser people.
  44. Jake:like I said in the previous episode, I've been, because I knew you were going to do
  45. Jake:this episode, I've been trying to keep myself away from it, so I'm hearing this for the
  46. Jake:first time, but very much the information I saw suggested that Google is trying to destroy
  47. Jake:JavaScript forever.
  48. Surma:Yes, and that is true! No, no it's not.
  49. Surma:So, there is a delineation that is also, again, made very explicit in the slight deck itself.
  50. Surma:These people who are listed on the first slide, as like, you know, we want to talk about this,
  51. Surma:they all agree on the problem at hand, and they agree that something should be done.
  52. Jake:Mmm.
  53. Surma:The actual, quote-unquote, proposal, the thing that is proposed, showcased as a potential solution for this problem,
  54. Jake:Oh, okay, so this is where the Google's killing JavaScript bits come into it. I see, so it's
  55. Surma:called JS0, is by Google. It's the preferred solution by Google, and may or may not be the preferred solution
  56. Surma:of these other people working for these other companies.
  57. Jake:not totally made up. Oh.
  58. Surma:Yeah, maybe. That being said, when I looked to a slight deck, I liked it.
  59. Surma:I was not, there's nuances, and hopefully we're going to talk about all of these,
  60. Surma:but as not a language implementer, JavaScript implementer,
  61. Surma:but someone who has recently dabbled in trying to build their own language,
  62. Surma:I thought that proposal is quite good.
  63. Surma:Anyway, the reason the drama is interesting is because it was presented on October 8th.
  64. Jake:Okay, okay, come on then.
  65. Surma:The drama on Twitter was on October 5th.
  66. Jake:Oh.
  67. Surma:So, someone stumbled over, because the agenda is public, and the slight decks were linked,
  68. Surma:somebody stumbled over this, and decided to do a Twitter thread.
  69. Jake:I mean, look, I don't blame them for that. That's a juicy slide deck. I, look at this,
  70. Surma:It's a juicy slight deck.
  71. Jake:look at this data, it looks utterly terrifying. We should talk about what's in the slide deck,
  72. Jake:because I have looked at the slide deck.
  73. Surma:That's what I want to talk about.
  74. Surma:So, I haven't really made up my mind whether I want to link to the Twitter thread,
  75. Surma:because I feel like it did go viral, at least for the standards of a TC39-related topic,
  76. Surma:but also, I don't want that person to necessarily get griefed if people think they were being a bit overzealous,
  77. Surma:but also, I worry that the thread might not age super well.
  78. Surma:So, I'd rather link to the slight deck and the official things,
  79. Jake:Yes, so it was basically that Google is replacing JavaScript with Dart, right?
  80. Surma:and people can hopefully, I'm going to say, form their own opinion after listening to my opinion
  81. Surma:for what is probably going to be two hours.
  82. Surma:So, let's see.
  83. Surma:So, I'll try and explain this proposal, the slight deck, and how I understand it,
  84. Surma:and how it's motivated, and maybe I can weave in a couple of the misunderstandings
  85. Surma:or the concerns that I've seen, and talk a bit about them.
  86. Surma:No, that was about ten years ago.
  87. Jake:Right.
  88. Surma:They did do that, and then they backpedaled on that.
  89. Surma:This one is actually, at its core, quite simple.
  90. Jake:Okay, cool, good.
  91. Jake:All right.
  92. Surma:It splits the JavaScript language into two layers.
  93. Jake:Right.
  94. Surma:There is the JS0 layer, that is JavaScript,
  95. Surma:as it is implemented by what TC39 calls implementers.
  96. Surma:So, those are the engines, the browsers, the buns, the dinos of this world.
  97. Surma:Well, I guess, you know, both bun and dino actually just use an engine from a browser,
  98. Jake:Yes, sure.
  99. Surma:but you know what I mean.
  100. Surma:And JS0 would probably be what JavaScript is today.
  101. Surma:Kind of like, that's JS0.
  102. Surma:The second layer, second part, is JSSugar,
  103. Surma:which would kind of be its own separate specification,
  104. Surma:but a proper, like, standard specification,
  105. Surma:and that's the JavaScript that developers write.
  106. Surma:So, now there's a separation between what browsers or what implementers can execute,
  107. Jake:Okay, and so there's nothing new about this. I mean, we've been doing this for, well, we've
  108. Surma:and what developers would write.
  109. Surma:Kind of, yeah.
  110. Jake:had that split for years, right? Like, we've, I know that when I open up, like, JSpin or
  111. Jake:CodePen or whatever, like, I'm in raw JavaScript mode, and whereas when I'm pretty much writing
  112. Jake:code for most of the time, I'm writing TypeScript, so I am writing some sort of sugar on top.
  113. Surma:Exactly.
  114. Jake:Okay.
  115. Surma:Exactly.
  116. Surma:I think that's where all the tension was seen by some of the developers
  117. Surma:who feel strongly about writing vanilla.
  118. Surma:So, we can dive into that a bit.
  119. Surma:So, the idea would be, is that now, basically,
  120. Surma:it is part of the standardized process of writing JavaScript,
  121. Surma:is that there has to be a translation tool that translates JSSugar into JS0.
  122. Jake:Cool.
  123. Surma:And you're right, that is already reality in most scenarios.
  124. Jake:Wait, do I have to type this out?
  125. Jake:Yes, you do.
  126. Surma:Like, you have your Babels, or your SWCs, or rolldowns, or TSC.
  127. Jake:Okay.
  128. Jake:Okay.
  129. Jake:Okay.
  130. Jake:Okay.
  131. Jake:So, I'm going to type it out.
  132. Surma:You have, usually, in any non-throwaway setup,
  133. Jake:Okay.
  134. Jake:Okay.
  135. Jake:Okay.
  136. Jake:Okay.
  137. Surma:a tool that processes your JavaScript.
  138. Jake:Okay.
  139. Jake:Okay.
  140. Jake:Okay.
  141. Jake:What was it?
  142. Surma:At the very least, for minification,
  143. Jake:Okay.
  144. Jake:Okay.
  145. Surma:but most of the time, you have some sort of target ES2016,
  146. Jake:Okay.
  147. Jake:Okay.
  148. Jake:Okay.
  149. Jake:Okay.
  150. Jake:Okay.
  151. Surma:because you want to write ES2020 and use newer features,
  152. Jake:Okay.
  153. Jake:Okay.
  154. Jake:Okay.
  155. Jake:Okay.
  156. Surma:but then it gets transpiled down to an older version of JavaScript,
  157. Jake:Okay.
  158. Jake:Okay.
  159. Jake:Okay.
  160. Jake:Okay.
  161. Jake:Okay.
  162. Surma:because it has broader support by browsers,
  163. Jake:There's two worlds where this could happen.
  164. Surma:and so you have to worry less.
  165. Surma:And this is kind of like, what if we standardize that?
  166. Surma:And it's not just for the LOLs, right?
  167. Jake:Or two ways it could go.
  168. Jake:One way would be like, okay, TypeScript is now brought in as part of JS Sugar.
  169. Jake:It's standardized, so it's now not just Microsoft making all the decisions.
  170. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  171. Jake:It's more of a sort of cross-company thing.
  172. Jake:But it's kind of acknowledged that this will never work just straight in a browser console.
  173. Jake:It's always going to be something that is compiled down to normal JavaScript.
  174. Jake:And I am actually fine with that, because I never really had an expectation of TypeScript
  175. Jake:ever making it into browsers proper.
  176. Jake:The other way it could go is that new features that developers want come along, and user
  177. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  178. Jake:agents, you know, the people on TC39 that are very powerful, because they write the
  179. Jake:JavaScript engines.
  180. Jake:They're part of browsers.
  181. Jake:They're part of, you know, Google, Firefox, Apple.
  182. Jake:They say, we can't be bothered with that, so it goes in JS Sugar.
  183. Jake:And that's where everything goes from now on, and it really forks the language completely.
  184. Jake:And features that you would expect, like maybe things like async await, you know, in this
  185. Jake:new world would have ended up in Sugar and never worked in the browser proper.
  186. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  187. Jake:And I think that's the case that people are afraid of, and so am I, I think.
  188. Jake:Thank you.
  189. Jake:Thank you.
  190. Jake:Thank you.
  191. Jake:
  192. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  193. Jake:Thank you.
  194. Jake:Thank you.
  195. Jake:Thank you.
  196. Jake:
  197. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  198. Jake:Yeah, that's the thing.
  199. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  200. Jake:It's like, it's not like CSS, which seems to like, especially these days, is growing
  201. Jake:features at an amazing rate, whereas, as you say, JavaScript sort of, yeah, it kind of
  202. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  203. Jake:has a couple of features a year.
  204. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  205. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  206. Jake:But that's the bits I'm worried about.
  207. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  208. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  209. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  210. Jake:Yeah, so, but let's talk about things like, you know, array.at, which is pretty helpful
  211. Jake:for getting, like, the last item of an array.
  212. Jake:Is that the kind of thing that's going to end up in JS Sugar land?
  213. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  214. Jake:Yes.
  215. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  216. Jake:Yeah, let's say, oh, we can't do array.at in a fast way.
  217. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  218. Jake:Or a secure way.
  219. Jake:But then people are going to be using a Sugar implementation, which either has those problems
  220. Jake:or doesn't.
  221. Jake:And if it doesn't have those problems, then why couldn't the browser just do it?
  222. Jake:Or, you know, I understand that if they're writing this stuff in, like, Zygo or C++ or
  223. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  224. Jake:whatever, that's, you know, they're in a more security sensitive zone.
  225. Jake:But why can't polyfills just be, like, done in JavaScript?
  226. Jake:Within the browser.
  227. Jake:But I guess the one difference between that is the versioning, right?
  228. Jake:It's like, you know, with JS Sugar, it's done by a tool which I'm in control of the version
  229. Jake:of, whereas with browser level features, it's the browser version.
  230. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  231. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  232. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  233. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  234. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  235. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  236. Jake:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think for a good long while now.
  237. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  238. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  239. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  240. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  241. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  242. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  243. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  244. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  245. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  246. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  247. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  248. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  249. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  250. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  251. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  252. Jake:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
  253. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  254. Surma:Transcribed by https://otter.ai
  255. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  256. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  257. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  258. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  259. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  260. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  261. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  262. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  263. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  264. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  265. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  266. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  267. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  268. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  269. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  270. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  271. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  272. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  273. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  274. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  275. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  276. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  277. Surma:Transcribed by httpbs
  278. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  279. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  280. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  281. Jake:I'm really torn on this because on one hand, like, yeah, I see the issue, the security
  282. Jake:issue and whatever.
  283. Jake:But then I also see, like, two of the richest companies in the world, Google and Apple.
  284. Jake:It almost feels like a collusion of, like, well, what if we just stopped competing on
  285. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  286. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  287. Jake:these features and our lives would be much easier?
  288. Jake:Yes.
  289. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  290. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  291. Jake:It's already the case to some degree with TypeScript, right?
  292. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  293. Jake:Yes.
  294. Jake:Yes.
  295. Jake:
  296. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  297. Jake:Yeah, I wouldn't mind that.
  298. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  299. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  300. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  301. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  302. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  303. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  304. Jake:I wouldn't mind that.
  305. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  306. Jake:I think that would be...
  307. Jake:And then, like, you know, once performance issues were identified, then maybe, yes,
  308. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  309. Surma:Transcribed by httpsbs
  310. Surma:Transcribed by gPls
  311. Jake:that bit could be brought into, you know, C++, Lansing, whatever.
  312. Surma:Transcribed by gPls
  313. Surma:Transcribed by gPls
  314. Surma:Transcribed by gPls
  315. Surma:Transcribed by gPLS
  316. Jake:Yeah, and I agree, and I still say that there is, like, an implementation
  317. Surma:Transcribed by gPLS
  318. Surma:Transcribed by gPLS
  319. Surma:Transcribed by w34
  320. Surma:Transcribed by gPLS
  321. Surma:Transcribed by w34
  322. Surma:Transcribed by w34
  323. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  324. Surma:Transcribed by w112
  325. Jake:of this, which I like, which is, like, TypeScript is brought into it, and then that gets sort
  326. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  327. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  328. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  329. Jake:of more scrutiny, I guess, more careful development.
  330. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  331. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  332. Jake:Maybe some of the mistakes TypeScript has made in the past are less likely to happen
  333. Surma:Transcribed by w12
  334. Jake:in the future.
  335. Surma:Yeah
  336. Jake:It's not just one company in control of it.
  337. Jake:Like, that all sounds good, but then I think the reason I feel icky about it is the ghost
  338. Jake:of IE6, you know, is still there, and this was a time where, like, you know, Microsoft
  339. Jake:dominated the browser space, and they just stopped, because they didn't have to do any
  340. Jake:more work.
  341. Jake:And whereas this is a different shape, because, you know, the other browsers are still there,
  342. Jake:but yeah, it feels like they're all shaking hands and going, well, wouldn't our lives
  343. Jake:easier if we just all, you know, didn't bother anymore?
  344. Surma:But I mean that's not really
  345. Jake:Like, we all, like, it's, yeah, we all just colluded just to say, we'll stop it.
  346. Surma:But I mean that's not really
  347. Surma:But I mean that's not really
  348. Surma:what's being said, right?
  349. Surma:something the language would evolve
  350. Surma:is just about
  351. Surma:they would focus on capabilities
  352. Surma:capabilities
  353. Surma:capabilities
  354. Jake:No, and that's two extremes of implementation of this, right?
  355. Surma:Yeah
  356. Surma:capabilities
  357. Jake:And even with the best of intents now, it's not necessarily where it will land.
  358. Surma:capabilities
  359. Surma:capabilities
  360. Surma:capabilities
  361. Jake:Like, so another thing that I'm reminded of is, feels like I'm just, like, shitting on
  362. Surma:capabilities
  363. Surma:Yes
  364. Jake:Microsoft constantly, but it is another example here, is when Microsoft dropped its engine,
  365. Surma:Yes
  366. Surma:Yes
  367. Surma:Yes
  368. Jake:and they said, like, well, the great thing about us dropping our engine and getting Chromium
  369. Surma:Yes
  370. Surma:Yes
  371. Jake:instead, it's like, we can all now work on Chromium, which was genuinely, I believe,
  372. Surma:Yes
  373. Surma:Yes
  374. Jake:the intent at the time.
  375. Surma:Yes
  376. Jake:But then people higher up in the company went, wait a minute, we don't have to.
  377. Surma:Yes
  378. Surma:Yes
  379. Jake:So because Google will do it.
  380. Surma:Yes
  381. Surma:Yes
  382. Jake:So we can do, we do other things.
  383. Surma:Yes
  384. Surma:Yes
  385. Jake:And I worry that with this agreement in place, that JavaScript now doesn't have to have any
  386. Surma:Yes
  387. Surma:Yes
  388. Surma:Yes
  389. Jake:new features implemented by browser engineers.
  390. Surma:Yes
  391. Surma:Yes
  392. Jake:Yeah, but we're going to work super hard on the other stuff.
  393. Surma:Yes
  394. Surma:Yes
  395. Jake:Someone higher up at Google is going, well, the ads team could use some more engineers.
  396. Surma:Yes
  397. Surma:And you know what I think that is
  398. Surma:it's at the very least a valid
  399. Surma:concern, right? Like for me there was also the parallel
  400. Surma:if now
  401. Surma:J0 is kind of like a compile
  402. Surma:target, is it just a stepping
  403. Surma:stone that we just compile Javascript
  404. Surma:to Wasm at some point? I mean Wasm is currently
  405. Surma:a really shitty target for
  406. Surma:dynamically typed languages
  407. Surma:like it's just not very good like with
  408. Jake:Flutter, as well, right, Flutter, it's just like, well, we'll just ship our own engine.
  409. Surma:WasmGC it's a step in the
  410. Surma:right direction but really
  411. Surma:like it's still not good for dynamic typing
  412. Surma:but at the same time
  413. Surma:like maybe that is something that
  414. Surma:at some point would happen that we're like
  415. Surma:no, just don't, we don't choose
  416. Surma:a language anymore, all the processing
  417. Surma:compiling, transpiling happens outside
  418. Surma:the browser and you just ship one binary
  419. Surma:format to us which
  420. Surma:I don't know, that could happen, that's kind of how
  421. Surma:phones work, right?
  422. Surma:Yeah
  423. Surma:One other thing that people
  424. Jake:Today, I should try them again, because I've never had a great experience with Salesforce,
  425. Surma:did flag is like they were worried about the debugging
  426. Surma:experience and
  427. Surma:I'm like, I mean we have source maps
  428. Surma:and as much as I do not like them
  429. Surma:they work
  430. Surma:pretty reliably nowadays, like I'm always
  431. Surma:impressed that
  432. Jake:but that might be my fault.
  433. Surma:It's like recently whenever I
  434. Surma:build stuff with Vite
  435. Surma:I step through my
  436. Surma:TypeScript code
  437. Surma:but I agree, like I have the same gut
  438. Surma:feeling where it's like, but they're not robust
  439. Surma:are they? But then I keep thinking as well
  440. Surma:you know like
  441. Surma:no engineer working on
  442. Surma:systems stuff
  443. Surma:steps through assembler, they step through their
  444. Surma:C++, C or Rust code
  445. Surma:so this problem has been solved
  446. Surma:and maybe source maps just aren't
  447. Surma:the right solution or the right enough
  448. Surma:solution and we just need to
  449. Surma:you know, learn more from them
  450. Surma:like I'm talking about, like I know a lot about this
  451. Jake:That's fair, you've made an annoyingly good point.
  452. Surma:but I think this
  453. Surma:is a problem that is solvable because it
  454. Surma:has been solved for all those
  455. Surma:compiled languages, like you can step through
  456. Surma:your C++ code and
  457. Surma:inspect the values even though
  458. Surma:what is actually being executed is
  459. Surma:machine code on your processor
  460. Surma:so why should JavaScript to
  461. Surma:JavaScript be suddenly
  462. Surma:so much harder
  463. Surma:but clearly
  464. Surma:it is not at the point
  465. Surma:where we feel confident about that
  466. Surma:so that is work that also would have to be done
  467. Surma:so again, something to just be
  468. Surma:mindful of, like it's still
  469. Surma:fair to be concerned about that
  470. Surma:so
  471. Surma:that was effectively
  472. Surma:the rundown of J0
  473. Surma:I think it's not an official
  474. Surma:proposal in the sense that there is
  475. Surma:a repository for all other
  476. Surma:proposals, I'm assuming something
  477. Surma:like this may come along at some point
  478. Surma:stage 0 I suppose
  479. Surma:because like I said, it was only talked
  480. Jake:Well, that would have to change.
  481. Surma:about in TC39 as
  482. Surma:a discussion and
  483. Surma:I guess we'll keep an eye
  484. Surma:on it, what this means for engines
  485. Surma:for browsers and also for
  486. Surma:tooling authors because this is
  487. Surma:I think for me the biggest
  488. Surma:unknown what it means to suddenly
  489. Surma:put more tooling people
  490. Surma:at the table at TC39
  491. Surma:which I'm not even sure, like you can't join
  492. Surma:as a single person, you have to have a
  493. Surma:company sponsor you
  494. Surma:I think
  495. Jake:If they're kicking the can down to, like, you know.
  496. Surma:yeah, for example
  497. Surma:yeah, like I know that some
  498. Surma:people are individuals and join
  499. Surma:TC39 as
  500. Surma:invited experts, like Guy Bedford is one of
  501. Surma:these people who has done actually a lot of
  502. Surma:proposals there and I don't
  503. Surma:know, now I'm claiming like he's an
  504. Surma:invited expert and not coming
  505. Surma:sponsored by a company but it is
  506. Surma:definitely possible but I think you're
  507. Surma:right, that's one of the things that probably
  508. Surma:should be revisited if
  509. Surma:now tooling people who are often
  510. Surma:just like open source volunteers
  511. Jake:Hm.
  512. Surma:are more or less forced to
  513. Surma:participate in this and I
  514. Surma:hope that also then they would not
  515. Surma:be treated as like a second
  516. Surma:class
  517. Surma:member of the board because
  518. Surma:I don't know, like
  519. Surma:is now J0 the
  520. Surma:lead crew and then Jsugar the
  521. Surma:just desugaring code
  522. Jake:I can see that happening.
  523. Surma:and of course
  524. Surma:there's another person also
  525. Jake:Yeah.
  526. Surma:was saying, how is this preventing
  527. Jake:It's interesting because it's going to be, like you were saying before, that they, you
  528. Surma:from just repeating the same mistakes, like how do we
  529. Surma:not just end up with another intermediate
  530. Surma:layer before we then have to start
  531. Surma:migrating features from
  532. Surma:Jsugar to Js0 for performance
  533. Surma:reasons and we just basically end up in the same
  534. Surma:spot just with an even slower
  535. Surma:process. That also was quite interesting
  536. Surma:so many things to think about but like I said
  537. Surma:it's an early proposal so we have
  538. Surma:to just follow along and see what
  539. Surma:happens to our beloved JavaScript.
  540. Jake:know, we've made async iterators, but no one uses them.
  541. Jake:It's actually going to be harder to measure which of these JS sugar features are being
  542. Surma:...
  543. Jake:used.
  544. Jake:Like you could look on npm for downloads of the package, but you don't know which of the
  545. Surma:...
  546. Surma:...
  547. Jake:features within it are being used, right, unless they have a use count, but no one would
  548. Surma:...
  549. Surma:...
  550. Jake:want that.
  551. Surma:...
  552. Jake:So, okay.
  553. Jake:Yeah.
  554. Surma:...
  555. Jake:I am, I am worried about this whole thing, but I'm not like, I'm not pitchfork level.
  556. Surma:...
  557. Surma:...
  558. Surma:...
  559. Jake:I'm kind of interested to see where it goes.
  560. Surma:On the scale of 0
  561. Surma:to bat with nails in it
  562. Jake:Yeah, I've got the, I've got a pitchfork on order, just in case.
  563. Surma:...
  564. Surma:...
  565. Surma:...
  566. Surma:...
  567. Surma:...
  568. Surma:...
  569. Surma:...
  570. Surma:...
  571. Surma:...
  572. Surma:...
  573. Jake:You also did a good episode on source maps in general, which I think goes through some
  574. Surma:...
  575. Jake:of the issues that we've had with them.
  576. Surma:...
  577. Surma:...
  578. Surma:...
  579. Surma:...
  580. Jake:Amazing.
  581. Surma:...
  582. Surma:...
  583. Jake:Bye!
  584. Surma:...
  585. Jake:All right.
  586. Surma:...
  587. Surma:...
  588. Surma:...
  589. Surma:...
  590. Surma:...
  591. Surma:...
  592. Surma:...
  593. Surma:...
  594. Surma:...
  595. Surma:...
  596. Jake:That was good.
  597. Surma:...
  598. Jake:
  1. TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part II: JS0 and JSSugar

    TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part II: JS0 and JSSugar

  2. TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part I: Shared Structs

    TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part I: Shared Structs

  3. More build tools: Nix

    More build tools: Nix

  4. The new stylable <select> element

    The new stylable <select> element

  5. Chrome's new LLM AI API OMG

    Chrome's new LLM AI API OMG

  6. Chrome’s secretly installed extensions

    Chrome’s secretly installed extensions

  7. Are web components worth it?

    Are web components worth it?

  8. Why Source Maps don’t always work

    Why Source Maps don’t always work

  9. Putting React In The Browser

    Putting React In The Browser

  10. Canvas-based Web Apps

    Canvas-based Web Apps

  11. The Apple PWA Ban

    The Apple PWA Ban

  12. TC39 Roundup and Bevy’s ECS

    TC39 Roundup and Bevy’s ECS

  13. The Big Build Bool Bonanaza II

    The Big Build Bool Bonanaza II

  14. WebGPU and Browser Ideologies

    WebGPU and Browser Ideologies

  15. From the Archive — Changing jobs, Deno, and optimizing animations

    From the Archive — Changing jobs, Deno, and optimizing animations