ECMAScript 6’s parameter destructuring and forEach()

This blog post gives a brief introduction to destructuring in ECMAScript 6 and how the array method forEach() profits from it.

Perl and Python influences in JavaScript

If you search the Mozilla Central code base for the texts "Perl" and "Python" (don’t ignore case) then the comments mention what methods have been borrowed from those languages. The paths mentioned below are relative to /js/src/.
[Inspiration: a blog post by Ziyun Fei.]

Link-friendly content

Have you published a blog post or a GitHub project? This document gives tips for making your content appealing to link to. They are based on things I noticed while collecting material for the JavaScript Weekly email newsletter. The tips should also make your content more appealing to “normal” readers.

asm.js: closing the gap between JavaScript and native

Update 2013-12-30:

• New feature 32 bit floats pushes asm.js performance to 70% of native.
• More JavaScript engines support asm.js.
• The conclusion mentions LLJS as another asm.js source language.

asm.js defines a subset of JavaScript that can be compiled to fast executables. It has been created at Mozilla by David Herman, Luke Wagner and Alon Zakai. According to the specification, “[asm.js] effectively describes a safe virtual machine for memory-unsafe languages like C or C++.” This blog post describes how asm.js works, it is based on the specification.

The Edge 2013 videos are online

Edge 2013 was a web development conference that took place on February 9, 2013, in London. Its approach was different from most conferences. Quoting the website:

Edge is a different kind of conference, for developers with experience to share, who want to see and bring improvements to the web platform. Our emphasis is on creating a good environment for productive debate and discussion, rather than presenting the experiences of a single speaker.

Each themed session is an hour long, and starts with a maximum 10 minute talk by an expert in that topic, outlining the current state of the platform in that area. [...] The remainder of the session will be given over to an open but structured discussion, with a professional moderator and a panel of seasoned developers who have in-depth knowledge of the subject. [...]

Session participants will include [...] a notetaker to record the discussion so we can share it on the web later.

Tweets with Internet Explorer usage statistics

People are posting Internet Explorer usage statistics on Twitter, tagged with #postyourIEstats (link works without being logged in). Summary:

• IE6 is mostly dead, as it should be.
• IE7 and IE8 still see considerable usage, but it’s on the decline.
• IE9 is currently most popular. As of 2012-11-15, it is the oldest Internet Explorer still supported by Google.
• IE10 usage is still low.

JavaScript’s regular expressions: more fun with XRegExp

Reminder: As soon as your JavaScript regular expressions become more complicated, you should probably use Steven Levithan’s XRegExp library. The cool thing about XRegExp is that it internally compiles its extended regular expressions to normal regular expressions, meaning that they are fast. Let’s look at some of XRegExp’s highlights, quoted from the XRegExp website.

Next from Apple: better information management?

At the moment, all desktop operating systems and all mobile operating systems are remarkably similar. Is there anything genuinely new that could be done in this space? Information management is an area that is still neglected – especially by Apple. But signs indicate that that might change.

Learning JavaScript via other languages

Looking back on my life, three programming languages prepared me well for JavaScript (which has some challenging aspects):

JavaScript: fixing categorization

Categorizing values in JavaScript is quirky. This blog post explains the quirks and one approach to fixing them. To understand everything, it helps to be familiar with how values are categorized in JavaScript. If you aren’t, consult [1].