Today was my first @TC39 meeting! The term "web-compatible" was thrown around a lot, and I've been thinking a bit about it. Thread time!
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First, what does it mean for a change to be "web-compatible"? The definition itself is pretty uninteresting: a change is web-compatible if it doesn't break the web. This might seem circular, but the consequences are interesting.
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At face value, sure, it's easy to understand that not breaking the web means not making breaking changes to the spec, so that existing sites can continue functioning. This is largely familiar to anyone who has worked in a standards body.
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The key, and what's uniquely different about TC39, is "existing sites". This means the /whole/ web. We're not just trying to not break the major browsers, we're trying to not break your cousin's geocities site.
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What's been so interesting to think about is what that means. There's an equality of value here. While it would be banal for the Python steering council to assign equal value to every Python program, webpages are uniquely a form of expression in addition to a business tool.
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Without getting too idealistic, that makes TC39... "custodians", of a kind. Librarians of the web, everything from corporate portals to poetry archives. Cool to think about.
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#SmooshGate continues to be a good example, IMHO:https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/03/smooshgate …
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Replying to @mathias
Yes! This is fantastic, and exactly the phenomenon I had in mind. Thank you for sharing
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