ECMAScript 6 compatibility table VS wtfjs

http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

This page lists features from es6 (and newer versions linked at the top) along with compliance to the spec. First column is the current browser, second is babel+corejs polyfills.

Overall, babel gets about 70% of the way there.

Case in point: Tail Call Optimization has been part of the JS spec since ES6, but remains completely unimplemented in all mainstream browsers/engines besides Safari[1]. For all but the most predictable inputs, you're pretty much forced to use loops where recursion would otherwise be preferable.

Additional case in point: async Iterables cannot be processed as a piped stream. You must use the for await construct, which is a shame considering the FP niceties that the Array type already provides for more traditional lists. Once again, you are forced to use an imperative construct unless you specifically want to defeat the purpose of using an Iterable in the first place by trying to convert it into an Array (... and potentially choking in the process, I might add!).

[1]: https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

Eventually the browsers started racing to near-full ES6 compatibility. I remember following ES6 progress in realtime with articles and with compatibility tables http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ . But many people are acting like that either didn't happen, or like it was a one and done thing (despite the ESNext naming shift to avoid the focus on numbers). So we see people just hand-waving away the importance of polyfills like in this gem:

> https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

Oh man this was a rough one both for FF and Chrome but Chrome did perform better slightly on cursory glance.

Thanks for providing these links, they're definitely a good rule of thumb benchmarks to test new browsers

Javascript / CSS language syntax: can see availability for Javascript here - https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

I say this as a JS user, but there is no singular JavaScript (realistically, it's not even JavaScript but instead ECMAScript). There is no one place to go that lays out all of what the language can or can't do the way PHP and Python do. The ECMAScript board makes recommendations, then the browsers and runtimes implement features of the recommendations. This site does a good job laying out which features are implemented for browsers and runtimes based on the flavor of the ECMAScript standard. This unique experience can be especially frustrating for someone learning JavaScript and coming from another language that does not have this problem.

https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ has a column for "current browser"

Me in the interview: "Generally, no, a variable can only be assigned one numeric value at a time. However, Javascript is famous for unpredictable behaviors in variable comparison statements, for instance [] == ![]. There's actually a whole library built around documenting this type of behavior this for comedic value, and other more serious libraries geared towards solving the problem. So it's possible that some obscure variable assignment scenario would result in that line evaluating as true, but it's not something you'd expect to encounter in the real world. This has gotten a lot better with typescript and es2022, but still something you need to watch for a bit."

I do see that point of view, didn't think of that, there are some aspects of go which are a bit weird if you never touched lower abstraction languages, yet once you learn what they are, you are all set and you can code in anything. go has the least amount of gotchas I have seen in any programming language. compare it with loads of the weird stuff javascript does https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs and go is like heavenly lol

Its a very poorly designed language. Its syntax and semantics are often confusing and unpredictable. There is no well defined mental model of how constructs work in this language.

WTF JS

😎 A great guide to Javascript that is both simple and wonderful, but also difficult and fun that seems like bullshit. -> wtfjs