Re: Coordination (was: ES6 Modules)

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Dirk Pranke <dpranke@chromium.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:06 AM, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@annevk.nl>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Rick Waldron <waldron.rick@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > The "DOM side" should all be subscribed to es-discuss and read it on a
>> > regular basis. Additionally, our f2f meeting notes are a great way for
>> them
>> > to keep up to date, as well as providing a good jump off for questions
>> and
>> > concerns.
>>
>> Given the number of people working on platform APIs that "should"
>> seems ever less likely to become a reality. We need a different
>> strategy.
>>
>>
> I also think you need a different strategy. If people interested in
> defining new APIs for the web have to be tracking how the JS language
> itself is evolving, this is a total failure of both one or both sides.
>

This statement negates itself—people defining new APIs have an obligation
to understand the language in which the APIs they are writing will be used.



> A slightly more ridiculous example to prove my point would be to suggest
> that web spec authors should also be tracking the minutes of WG21 (the ISO
> C++ committee), since all of these APIs are actually being implemented in
> C++ :
>
> However, I grant that there are three valid points between where we are
> and where we want to be:
>
> 1) A great many existing DOM APIs are very un-JS-friendly
>

Agreed.


>
> 2) We need better examples of what JS-friendly APIs are (or should be)
>

I can't believe I'm reading this, as if you believe there are no examples
of real world code that is very JS-friendly?

As far as "outreach", in my own experience whenever I've offered feedback
directly to DOM API authors, I'm frequently met with responses such as
"that's not consistent with the platform [/end]".


> 3) TC39 et al. need to give us a language where we can build sane DOM APIs
> without feeling like we need to change the language to do so :).
>
>
Meanwhile, library authors have no trouble designing sane DOM APIs that web
developers enjoy using. The difference: library authors listen to their
users, DOM API authors do not.



> To that end, we probably do need more *short-term* interaction, but I
> don't think asking everyone working on a DOM spec to follow es-discuss is
> the best way to do so. There's actually very little overlap between what is
> talked about most of the time on es-discuss and the sort of stuff a DOM
> spec author cares about.
>

So far today, every response from a non-TC39 member has been to the tune of
"I want something, but I don't want to work for it, so find another way to
give it to me, but I don't have any suggestions". There is no free lunch.
If you want to know what's going on, here's the subscription page:
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss

Rick


>
> -- Dirk
>
>