ECMAScript 5 is an ECMA standard (despite IBM, Intel voting no)

How much of this stuff is coming from real-world need, and how much from <i>ideas about</i> how programming <i>ought</i> to be? I have a strong impression of the latter.<p>There is a revealing phrase in the blog post linked to elsewhere in this thread (<a href="http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-5-objects-and-properties/" rel="nofollow">http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-5-objects-and-properties/</a>): "Property descriptors (and their associated methods) is probably the most important new feature of ECMAScript 5. It gives developers the ability to have fine-grained control of their objects, <i>prevent undesired tinkering</i>, and maintaining a unified web-compatible API." [italics added]<p>"Undesired tinkering" is the very essence of what made the web the web. These perennial efforts to add restrictions, control, lock-down, etc., seem to me rooted in a failure to understand this. Had these people been in control all along, there would never had been a web in the first place.<p>Every time I encounter this mentality, I refresh myself by re-reading Adam Bosworth's classic polemic in favor of the simple and sloppy: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447086" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447086</a>

If you want to read the standard: <a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...</a>

I wonder what this means for Douglas Crockford's "Good parts" subset and JSLint?<p>Those were islands of sanity and beauty in the ocean of raw sewage aka the browser environment.<p>In any case, I don't see this as evolutionary nor revolutionary. The benefits are non-existent, the hassles too many to enumerate. This feels like something a jobless and clueless government would do.

The title maybe should say ECMAScript 5 since I think a lot of us won't recognize ES5 as JavaScript.