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Hume's Guillotine slices again! Please think through this keynote at a conference. I was asked to talk about the early days of JS. Why do you suppose that I am aggrandizing by describing "is" (or "was") as if "ought" can be derived in a moral sense?

JS happened, I made it in ten days because it wouldn't have happened otherwise. Had I thought it through, I might have insisted on more time -- but then: VBScript.

We don't get to call these shots. Taste and morality have little to do with their hitting targets (whether the ones we aimed at, or others). All the good stuff in JS came from giants on whose shoulders or heads I stood.

I'm not a nihilist or materialist, but I have to laugh after 20 years. JS was not planned out this far in advance!

Anyhoo, my sense of self does not depend on ten days in May 1995. My work on the Web, not just JS but especially on Mozilla, Firefox, and HTML5, doesn't need aggrandizement. My best work has yet to be seen. I'm not doing these talks to boast. Peace.




Ha! That'll teach me to be uncharitable.

I'm happy to retract my unkind supposition, especially after a gracious reply like that.


Just ignore the trolls, most of these naysayers have never implemented a new programming language in their life, but they feel entitled to talk about taste and morality.


Maybe we have implemented, maybe one maybe more than one. Aren't we allowed to say what we think?


God made the earth in 7 days, He couldn't have explained it any better. Go Brendan Eich!




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